Romina Berenice Canet

Romina Berenice Canet is a fine artist, writer and award-winning art doll and bear maker. I came across her work recently and was entranced by her use of colour, the subject matter that inspires her work and the fact that her talent spans so many different mediums. I particularly love her art dolls and her paintings and it’s a selection of these that I thought that I’d share with you today. Romina’s evolution as an artist is intriguing in itself; having studied fine art at Argentina’s “Antonio Berni Visual Arts” she was an active part of the Buenos Aires arts scene. It was here that she immersed herself in studying drama, music, murals and became a published poet and trapeze enthusiast along the way. I think that her work is literally soaked in all of these diverse influences and that’s what makes it so powerful. Her handmade dolls come as either sculpture dolls or as wall-hanging articulated ones and I find them macabre, surreal, and fun all at the same time. They are beautiful and eerie like something from a dream that is just on the verge of slipping into nightmare. I think that you can see the love of the circus and trapeze coming through in the way that the dolls’ capture an anarchic carnival spirit. Romina’s paintings are fascinating too in the way the bright colours seem to pulse with South American vitality and I love the way that the subject matter delves into Argentinian folklore and unconscious fears and desires.