Doreen Southwood was born in 1974 in Cape Town. She completed her studies at BAFA University of Stellenbosch in 1998 and until today she continues to work and live in her hometown Capetown.
Doreen Southwood doesn't limit herself to work in any one medium and has produced sculpture, objects, prints and video. Notably though, when Southwood does work in two dimensions, the works retain something of an object-like nature. She often employs the skills of craftspeople such as glass blowers and cabinet-makers. Plumbing the depths of her conservative, white, middle-class Afrikaans upbringing, Southwood unearths a nasty cycle of repression, abuse and the coping mechanisms offered her by this society where women occupy a silent and haunted interior. The influence of peers such as Brett Murray, Lisa Brice and Bridget Baker is evident, particularly in her earlier work, but certainly in the work of the last years, she has found a voice of her own.