ABOUT
My images start from daily life experiences: "something seen or experienced that must be said". How I visually interact with a person or a place is never the same. Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher from the 5th century BC, believed that you could never step in the same river twice because it is not the same river, and you are not the same person. I share that belief. For me, life is fleeting and in a state of constant change. Through my art, I try to catch that moment and freeze it and perhaps revisit the image to see it in a different way. For me. Art is tantalizingly real and a part of my daily life. I’m constantly painting and printmaking. There is a sense of immediacy no matter the tool or the medium I use. Marks must be immediate and direct and have the look of "just being born" even though they could be the result of contemplation over a period of time. I will never wake up and wonder what I will create, because the moment is there and all that is needed is to enter that private space and express it.
VITA
Ann originally came from West New York, a city in New Jersey, in close proximity to New York City . Early years were spent with Ballet classes at the Ballet Arts in Carnegie Hall and visits to art museums and galleries. The exposure of varied experiences in the arts has helped to formulate an approach to art which is one of inclusivity and creative freedom. Her high school years at Memorial High were also contributing to a diversity of cultural activities with five art teachers in their program in the arts. She graduated with both an Art as well as Academic Degree. The head of the art department was Fabian Zaccone, whose work can be found in the National Gallery and her fellow classmate was the now famous artist, Lucas Samaras. Lucas and Ann would take weekly life drawing sessions in a nearby town. Drawing skills are evident from those early years.
Ann was the first in her family to finish high school and go on to college. She enrolled at Montclair State College (later to become Montclair University). The first Art Chairwoman, Dr. Lillian Calcia, was instrumental in a major acquisition of George Segal’s sculptures and was a guiding force for Ann as well. She encouraged Ann to apply for a Guggenheim Fellowship and also purchased her first painting, an oil painting with mixed media.
Upon graduation, Ann enrolled at New York University for the Masters Program in Art Education, and returned to Memorial High School to teach alongside Fabian Zaccone. The vibrancy of the 1960’s at NYU, in Washington Square, and New York City, encompassed the collision of the ‘isms” of the past with the New York School style of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field Painting. Dr.Hale Woodruff was Ann’s painting instructor and a preeminent African American artist of the Ash Can School. At NYU, Ann was not only introduced to Abstract Expressionism, but to Dadaism and Surrealism and the theories of ‘chance’. Seeking connections between disparate events and exploring materials for spacial energies runs deep in Ann’s art.. After graduating from NYU, she was accepted to the summer institute of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, where she studied under Philip Pearlstein, a well known figure painter of the 1960’s to 2000.
In 1983, Ann and her husband moved from New Jersey to Cape Cod. By 1984, she was adjunct professor of art at Cape Cod Community College and, while teaching, she enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts program in Printmaking and Visual Design at the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth. Her advisor, Mark St. Pierre, was a master printer in lithography. She also enrolled in workshops with Michael Mazur, studying techniques in monotype printmaking. Most of Ann’s prints unite monotype with lithography as well as etching. After graduating with an MFA in 2000, and shortly after her “artist in residency” at CCCC, Ann left Cape Cod for Florida in order to care for ailing parents. The change in environments resulted in two significant series, “Drawing From A Moving Car” and “Palms in the Wind”. Concepts on time and motion, as well as the effects of wind in nature and their points of stasis and crescendo are themes that later evolved into paintings about water, “Tracing The Currents”.
The main inspiration for Ann’s work has always been about concepts and ideas that come out of daily life experiences. It’s also about movement and gestural statements that, to Ann, are the truest form of expression. Moving between painting and printmaking, she is highly prolific and since moving back to Cape Cod in 2014, she has had numerous solo shows such as at The Cape Museum of Art in Dennis, “Nature: The Obsessive Quest”; The Cotuit Center for the Arts: “Shifting and Unfolding”; Highfield Hall and Gardens in Falmouth: “Trees”; Cape Cod Hospital, “24 works”; and the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset, “Surfacing”. She is a gallery artist at Cape Cod Art Center and the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset and is now represented by the AMZehnder Gallery in Wellfleet.
She has permanent collections locally: Cape Cod Community College, the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth, and the Museum of Art in Dennis. Private collections are in the United States, Europe, Russia and the far East. In 2022, Ann had two other solo shows: a retrospective at Preservation Hall in Wellfleet, “Origins”, as well as a solo show of her “Happenstances” large monotypes of “chance” placement of objects in an interior space, While Ann’s work covers a vast number of materials and techniques as well as differences in subject and concept, there is a consistent message threaded through both her art and teaching.. Despite the differences of appearance and attributes in objects, environments. and mediums, a connection exists: an inclusivity and relationship with chance, happenstance and time expressed directly and with gestural immediacy.
In February, 2023, She is having still another solo show: at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod in Yarmouth.: “Shifting Modes” The focus of this newest work is the expression of an idea as well as a feeling within a specific moment melding both representational and abstract modes of expression. She is questioning here the existence of categories in art and challenging the notion of whether there is a difference at all. While she has art in the permanent collection of the Cape Museum of Art, she has a multi-media piece in their Corporate Gallery as well: “American Portrait in Progress”, This piece unites lithography collage and monotype examining the present state of our country today. A possible beginning for yet another series ?
