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Printing the Family
Artist Anita Klein chooses to focus on the more everyday aspects of life - making breakfast, taking a bath, gardening. As Sarah Woolman discovered, the result is an intimate portrait of domestic life with her partner Nige and their children...
 Nige Tires of Reading |
Anita Klein doesn鈥檛 want to paint mirror images. She wants to paint portraits which come 'from inside'. So for her, the most obvious subjects are her family.
 Summer in the Garden |
Anita uses oil paints and because the paintings take so long to dry, she works on several at once and hangs them around the house. She says, 'a good way of deciding whether a painting is good or not is to hang it over the television when you鈥檙e watching Eastenders'.
Anita鈥檚 subject is the minutiae of life. The smaller and more insignificant the event, the better. She paints, she says, 'the life that happens while you鈥檙e busy doing something else: having a cup of tea, getting into the bath, waving goodbye to your children when they go to school.' Her aim is to celebrate the things that she would miss if her domestic life suddenly disappeared.
 Nige Examines his Zoom Lens |
Her husband, Nige is Anita鈥檚 muse and is the subject of a good many of her paintings. He鈥檚 become a bit of celebrity in his own right, particularly among women with husbands also called Nigel. But Nige isn鈥檛 quite sure he always gets recorded in the best light.
He concedes though that that he does get something out of it. He sees it as a sort of visual diary of "all the quiet little moments" that happen when he鈥檚 out at work.
And Anita鈥檚 paintings have given her an insight into other people鈥檚 lives. She says, 'I always think that I have the only husband who sits taking camera鈥檚 apart in bed'. He鈥檚 become a sort of Nigel for all seasons. Although Anita鈥檚 Nige isn鈥檛 quite sure that all husbands do nude yoga in the bedroom.
Anita鈥檚 daughters, Leila and Maia, don鈥檛 really like art galleries very much having been dragged around so many by their mother. But it鈥檚 a bit more interesting when they see pictures of themselves on the walls. It can be quite weird to see people looking at paintings of them, and the naked pictures of their parents 'freak them out' a bit.
 The Red Shoes |
But like it or not, Anita says her family are absolutely central to her life. She says "for as long as they鈥檙e around, they鈥檙e going to be in the pictures". So they鈥檇 better get used to it.
MORE INFORMATION
You can see more of Anita's work on her website
And her work is on show at the in Deptford, South London until 25th October.
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