Animated canvases, alive with color, and populated with intriguing animal forms are the captivating works of Minnesota painter Adu Gindy. She states, “Spontaneous gesture plays an important role in the initial stages of many of my works. I like the idea of coaxing a figure or its quasi-facsimile from the interplay of marks, lines, shapes and colors – grasping it as it emerges from some general abstraction. Painting in this manner keeps me in touch with my own innocent eye and my inner self. Though I create images after my own desires, all my images aren’t gesturally conceived. I have, and probably always will, borrow freely from a wide repertoire of cultural icons – Egyptian, Mexican, African, etc.” Although she cites the inspiration of artists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollack and Helen Frankenthaler, Adu’s works are uniquely her own.

Born in Estonia, Adu spent her early childhood in German displaced person camps during and after World War II. Eventually, she relocated to a Connecticut farm and formed a kinship with the animals there. “As a child,” she states, “I saw adults doing undignified, terrible things to each other. On the other hand I saw animals as regal creatures whose behavior was pure and void of vengeful acts. I guess it was inevitable that I would use creatures as my resource and source of inspiration when it came time to tell my stories and paint my paintings.” After graduating from Vassar College, where she was awarded a full scholarship, the artist lived for a time in New York City before finding herself back in Connecticut, raising a family, studying art with moonlighting professors from Yale University and participating in community efforts to bring art to her suburb. In the 1980s, she moved to Duluth and became an energetic supporter of artists, galleries and institutions in the northern port.

In Minnesota, she continued her formal study, earning an MFA at the University of Minnesota in 1989 then teaching at the School of Fine Art at the University if Minnesota Duluth until 2005. She has maintained an active exhibition schedule of solo and group shows, and has participated in residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Heliker-LaHotan Foundation in Maine. Adu is now a full-time painter based in Minneapolis.