‘Each of us carries our own metaphor,’ remarks Nancy De Boni, an artist whose grand scale oil on canvas works adopt the imagery of a bundle as a visual device expressing the complexity of interior and exterior identity. The richness of hue and delicacy of line with which De Boni paints her anthropomorphic visions express the corrosive quality of memory embodied in the bundle or package containing one’s personal emotions, thoughts and domestic articles. Dominated by shallow grays, blues, light greens, browns and buttery yellows, these symbolic yet convincing bundles allude to a cocoon, womb or otherwise nurturing ‘space’ of habitation. Interested in notions of shelter, embodiment and the traces we leave in our wake, De Boni interrogates with painterly ease the border conditions of body, mind and spirit. Using the subjective lens of her own experience, she reaches the universal, shared emotions that make us human.
Born in Canada, Nancy De Boni was raised in the city of Toronto. She graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1972.