Angela Cozea

Angela has been painting since 2012, when illness prevented her from continuing in her profession as a professor of literature at U of T. Left in the impossibility to read or write, she went back to an old passion which had marked her early years, when she was trained in the traditional French techniques of the turn of the 20th century.

In her academic work, Angela had explored the relationship between the human and the animal worlds, the way in which these two share characteristics and purpose. The fact, for instance, that animals and particularly birds practice a kin aesthetic judgement, which makes them able to build their nests, for instance, with emphasis on their beauty and originality going well beyond strict utilitarian, mating motifs, as it is usually assumed.

In her paintings she has tried to represent ways in which animals of different species come together, when circumstances allow, and build loving relationships based, as far as we can tell, on feelings of comfort, dependability, warmth, rejection of solitude, and friendship, all giving the lie to our conviction that species are separated by strict borders, dictated by antagonism or predatory instincts.

From there, it is easy to see how the present day holocaust operated upon the animal world, the annihilation of its environments, comes to the fore in the representation of the beauty and dignity of all these species doomed by progress. Painting such beings on their way to extinction becomes a small gesture of witnessing, by which we can express our dismay at a loss which nothing and no one can justify.