Deirdre White
Deirdre White is a San Francisco based painter whose work focuses on confluences of images, events, memories, and personal narrative about living in the American west. Her work may best be described as a type of magical realism, where hope and wonder survive amidst chaos, loss, and tragedy. She recently had two solo shows in San Francisco, at Ampersand International Arts and Analog Gallery, and she has exhibited her work nationally and throughout California. Her work has been featured on the album covers of John Dwyer (of Thee Oh Sees), The Sandwitches, and Sarah Beth Nelson, as well as on WHYY in Philadelphia’s Friday Arts segment. In 2018 Deirdre was awarded the Jon Imber Painting Fellowship at Vermont Studio Center. She is a Lecturer in painting and drawing at UC Davis and adjunct at City College of San Francisco in Studio Art.
Her subject matter is linked to contrasting themes such as shelter and exposure, order and chaos, loss, and abundance, heavy and light, bound and unravelling, and can be traced to an interest in the 20th century American preoccupation with mobility and how that concept has taken on new meaning in the present-day landscape of the American west. The visual paradox of endless manufactured desire built on the loss and nostalgia of a dying empire ravaged by greed and climate change manifests itself in a sense of urgent dream like flight; in California, what was once arriving is now being expelled in an ever-shifting dynamic of migration.
The experience of caring for her mother with Alzheimer's and trying to navigate the many phases of the disease with very little resources while also bearing witness to the deepening housing crisis in San Francisco and California in general had a profound effect on the direction of her work in the last decade, as she felt both a personal and collective sense of loss and unraveling around her.
Perhaps because of this personal experience, she is drawn to things that seem to locate a life affirming resilience of the human spirit. She has always been interested in painting's capacity to contain both abject sorrow and spectacular joy simultaneously in its mystery.
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