Shirley Villavicencio Pizango

Having grown up in the Peruvian capital of Lima and the small village of Santiago De Borja in the Amazon rainforest, Shirley Villavicencio Pizango moved to Ghent, Belgium when she was eighteen years old. Fourteen years later, Villavicencio Pizango has nicely reconciled these diverse experiences to record her daily life in Ghent by painting portraits of family, friends and strangers. She portrays her sitters within lush vegetation and amidst textiles, pottery and geometric forms reminiscent of Incan sources. Her paintings are colorful, loose, expressionistic and folky and her sitters are depicted with a concise sensitivity that conveys nostalgia, memory and melancholy.