CALLA DONOFRIO

My work explores my search for spirituality in a secular culture, with a recent focus on the relationship between violence and ancient religion, human suffering and spirituality.

I am inspired by Medieval and Baroque Catholic artwork and the way in which it illustrates a world that is both grotesque yet inexhaustibly beautiful, allowing for both of these qualities to exist simultaneously without being in conflict with one another.

Somewhere between these seemingly opposite things - dark and light, brutality and sweetness, freedom and fear - reality lies.

I allow my viewer to confront feelings of powerlessness in a destabilized world and the trauma we are left with after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gruesome religious imagery of human suffering, such as the passion of Christ, taps into our most primal and visceral feelings of anxiety and insecurity. Yet such imagery functions as a way for society to make sense of and assign meaning to our own suffering as individuals, which can at times feel meaningless.

My work describes dystopia, the cynicism and nihilism of our modern world, and man’s inhumanity to man. I want to help my viewers learn to still find beauty amidst the fear and struggles of daily life without turning away from these things.

Black Sun

Calla Donofrio is an American artist born in Torrance, California. She received her BFA in Fine Art from California Institute Of The Arts in 2013. Her work has shown in The Tate Modern, The Salmagundi Club, California Art Club, as well as galleries across Los Angeles, New York City, and around the U.S., Canada and England. Formerly a mixed media artist who created album artwork for Witch House musicians worldwide, she taught herself to paint in 2019 and now works in watercolors and oils using traditional techniques similar to 19th century European painters. Calla lives and works in Los Angeles.