Juanita Scerri was born and raised in Malta, a little island in the Mediterranean and moved to Toronto Canada in 2002 at the age of 33, where she was introduced to the dot painting technique through a very dear friend , who had spent 3 months working for a well known Australian painter .
With her own appreciation for dreams, shapes and colours as well as her new interest in dot artwork and it's amazing dream painting, she was inspired to develop her sense of creativity which she carried, but never fully expressed. With her dreams being always very complex she chose a different path, simple real life dreams.
Her passion for dancing has inspired some of her past work and became stronger in her project called Dancing Dots in 2014. Juanita has exhibited her work in Solo Shows , including several restaurants in Toronto and also participated in a few Group Exhibitions.
In 2015 the self taught artist experienced a lack of interest and energy in pursuing her work and she ended up taking a 4 year long hiatus. In 2020 she decided to focus once again on her art and has created 12 new pieces in the last 6 months . Since there has been no opportunities to have physical art shows due to COVID restrictions , she took her art to online galleries and developed a social media presence.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I have never had a desire for a sense of planning in my life, my ideal has always been to enjoy every moment to the fullest. However I always found necessary a sense of order and flow around me. As a self taught dot painting artist, my past work was inspired by simple images or forms that symbolized moments in my life or passions like dancing. The dot art around the image was not usually planned and the dots ended up representing my emotions or moods, changing through the choice of colours and direction.
I have suffered off and on with depression and anxiety since I was 22 years old. When COVID hit , losing my job together with the long isolation , had an immense effect on my mental health for several months. Until one day, after a 4 year hiatus I decided to start painting again ! The 12 pieces of artwork created between the fall of 2020 till today have taken a new and exciting direction. They express the transformation from my negative struggles to my new positive perspective of life and well being. When I paint the flow and the colours of the dots evoke in me a great sense of relaxation and tranquility. My goal is to keep creating and feeling happy with the hope that perhaps I can also bring joy to the viewer and show that creativity can set your mind and soul free.
Today I’m pursuing my art vigorously and exploring different ways to enhance my dot painting technique, experimenting with 3D effects and optical illusions created by different sizes of dots . The name Dancing Dots I created in 2014 became the idea behind my dot painting technique , which brings my emotions to life through texture and allows me to express and share that which I cannot express with words.
“A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art” ~ Paul Cezanne
