I am intrigued by the notion of impermanence and change, which is our constant experience. 

I craft my animations by following an idea and sometimes include cannibalized sections of previous works, be they watercolours, drawings or large early paintings that have previously been exhibited in the Nelson Mandela Museum or the Carnegie International. I add to this repertoire photos I capture of life around me, shadows, rainbows, enticing moments. This compelling approach - using “cannibalism” of my own artwork creates this beautiful cycle of creation, destruction, and rebirth that’s at the heart of impermanence. The fact that I am manipulating it all by hand in Procreate adds an intimate, personal layer to this process of constant transformation, which is both surprising and satisfying.

I am creating this expansive network where my physical artworks, captured moments from the world (shadows, rainbows), and digital drawing all flow together. It’s like I am harvesting impermanence from multiple sources and weaving them together. Incorporating these fleeting phenomena - shadows and rainbows are perfect metaphors for impermanence, existing briefly and never quite the same way twice.

In my animations impermanence is not just as a concept, but is a lived experience—something viewers can witness unfolding in real time. Each animation becomes a palimpsest, layered with drawn elements that I add directly over and through photographed fragments, which include previous work and captured moments from the world. This process mirrors the way experience accumulates in memory—recognizable forms persist for a time before transforming, merging, disappearing, only to emerge again in new configurations. The boundaries between past and present, constant and change all intermingle, just like our lived experience.

Artist Bio

Ilona Anderson is a South African artist with an international career, who came to Boston on a Fulbright Scholarship. She has many works in major South African collections including the National Gallery, the University of Witwatersrand Art Gallery, the Nelson Mandela Art Museum, as well as in private collections there and abroad. Ilona has exhibited in numerous museum shows in South Africa and America, such as The Carnegie International (in Pittsburgh), the Currier Museum Gallery of Art (NH) and all the museums in South Africa. In 2005 she was included in the SENTIMENTAL IMAGE, show at the DeCordova Museum (MA) curated by Nick Capasso & Alexandra Novina. In 2012 she showed at The Art Complex Museum Duxbury in Self Fabricated curated by Candice Smith Corby and Leslie Schomp.