Media Release: Much Loved Painter Shares Stunning New Art Book in Victoria on November 5, 2011

“I never really understood that I could express my inner self through art until I was in my thirties and studying art at university,” says Victoria artist, Phyllis Serota. “That was partly because I was a woman and I had the idea that only men could be artists.” The world is a richer place because of Serota’s epiphany that she, too, could create art that other people wanted to see. Serota’s story is now a gorgeous art book, illustrated both with reproductions of her work and photographs of the artist, her family, and friends. Serota will sign copies of her memoir, Painting My Life: A Memoir of Love, Art, and Transformation at Munro’s Books in Victoria on November 5. 2011.

Painting My Life illuminates the moments in her life that Serota has so often captured in her artwork: the Chicago neighbourhood of her childhood, the violence that coloured her family life, and the shadow of the Holocaust in which she grew up. In both words and images, Serota describes escalating police brutality in 1960s America, the swinging lifestyle of British Columbia’s west coast in the 1970s, the end of her marriage, her discovery of love with the woman who would become her partner for life, and her development as an internationally acclaimed artist.

Painting My Life is a gift to art lovers, to those who are fascinated by the place where art and life meet, and to those who are curious about how an artist comes of age during turbulent times. Luminous and heartbreaking, joyous and disturbing, dreamlike or brutally realistic, each painting reproduced in this book reflects in some way the artist’s ongoing quest to explore both personal and collective memory and to understand her place in the world.

Painting My Life Book Signing With Phyllis Serota

Saturday November 5th, 3:00 – 4:30pm

Munro’s Books

1108 Government Street, Victoria

A signed copy can be reserved by calling Munro’s Books at 250-382-2464

This event is free and open to the public.

A cover scan and a selection of high resolution images are available for download here.

Click here for more information about Painting My Life: A Memoir of Love, Art, and Transformation.

Click here for more information about Phyllis Serota.

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