Theresa-Anne Mackintosh obtained her BA (Fine Arts) (1990) and her MA (Fine Arts) (1995) degrees from the University of Pretoria, majoring in painting. She develops her work from a position of quiet but intense subjectivity, drawing from a rich referential vocabulary.
Mackintosh’s figures are startlingly human, sometimes dissolving into the abstract. These figures are interrupted identities that dwell in the pause state of the unspoken. They fuse and then retreat into an unnamable remoteness. Bodies embrace tentatively, yet there’s also a subcutaneous intensity that belies the quieter moments. Mackintosh’s figures also seem eerily complicit in each other’s unspoken plight. At times autobiographical, she creates a very distinct visual lexicon, giving shape to various personal situations, gestures and symbols.