Julie Abijanac

About Anne

Anne is a contemporary artist and writer based in Manhattan and on the East End of Long Island, NY. Exhibiting her work in Ohio with Art Access Gallery gratifyingly connects her to her deep roots in the arts through her grandmother, Licking County artist, Mary Sherwood Wright Jones (1892 – 1985.) She am interested in the narrative of materials. She paints large-scale abstract paintings on stained, cropped and stitched unstretched canvas. She sews the canvas panels together by machine, constructing a fundamental anatomy distinct to each work. Anne’s painting process is a full-body engagement; the movements and motifs I use become points of departure for choreography and performance.

Alongside her paintings, Anne makes smaller works on paper as a way to sample ideas. In creating both bodies of work, the paint is free to flee across the surface in rivulets; or in contrast, to soak deeply into the fabric or paper forming diluted tidelines. Employing simple tools such as string, a tack and straight edge, she draws systems of assertive overlapping circles, grids and zigzags in colored pencil. Subsequently hand-painted, the bold, geometric shapes are poised at various depths in the painted space.

In 2014, Anne moved her studio from Manhattan to Mattituck, NY where she now works year round. She draws inspiration from the region and from another East End painter, the late Alan Shields, who said about his own artwork,“The work goes through far more steps than it looks like. In the end, hopefully it just looks like it doesn’t have any steps in it at all. It’s just there.” She is interested in creating an authentic expression through her materials, writing and performances. This is reinforced by observing the every-changing North Fork landscape, with its transitional meadows, wetlands, fields, forests and waterways.

Anne has recently shown at The Works Museum in Newark, OH; the Southampton Arts Center, Southampton, NY and the BrownstoneArt Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Space Sisters Press published her artist’s book, The Garden, this year which has been acquired by several academic special collections including Denison University, Granville, OH; The New School for Social Research, New York, NY and the University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA. Her work has been reviewed in artcritical, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, ART21 Magazine, The Washington Post, The Suffolk Times and the Newark Advocate.