Jamaica Plain Open Studios Gallery
Anne Emerson
Location: 200 Pond Street, Jamaica Plain
WEBSITE: AnneEmersonArtwork.com I am a painter and a writer and the two actions seem to me to feed each other, opening me to see the world simultaneously in light and metaphor. I paint what pleases me and what moves me. My paintings are of people, things and places I love and most of my paintings have personal historical references. The act of painting is a meditation for me, awakening me to “all this joy and beauty,” in the words of my grandmother’s favorite prayer. In a way, my painting is also an act of longing. It is an effort to capture and hold the extraordinary feeling of being held in a natural place or emotion, suspended in beauty, power, solitude, and light. In the past several years, I have worked mostly in pastel, a medium which is having a renaissance. I love its luminous quality and the fact that you work with four hundred different colors and pastel sticks. I find it suits my need to work quickly and expressively and allows me to go back and refine at my own pace. I paint both plein air and in my studio from my own photographs. I generally paint in a series. As I spend much of my summer in East Penobscot Bay in Maine, I paint local subjects while there, often doing the same subject each year. I take workshops throughout the year and I go to the International Pastel Association Biannual meeting in Albuquerque, attending their workshops and demos of the world’s best pastel artists while I’m there. It is rewarding to add to my repertoire of techniques and see them reflected as I paint the same subjects again. I also do a lot of international travel and always take my pastels, so I have paintings in a wide variety of subjects from cityscapes of Havana, Paris and Venice, to elephants in South Africa. The pastel world is unusually hierarchical and organized, perhaps because it is having a renaissance. Not being much of a joiner, I resisted at first, but in the past year I have begun submitting work to various shows and have been pleased to receive recognition. I am a member of the Copley Society in Boston and represented by the Casco Bay Artisans Gallery in Portland, Maine.
WEBSITE: AnneEmersonArtwork.com I am a painter and a writer and the two actions seem to me to feed each other, opening me to see the world simultaneously in light and metaphor. I paint what pleases me and what moves me. My paintings are of people, things and places I love and most of my paintings have personal historical references. The act of painting is a meditation for me, awakening me to “all this joy and beauty,” in the words of my grandmother’s favorite prayer. In a way, my painting is also an act of longing. It is an effort to capture and hold the extraordinary feeling of being held in a natural place or emotion, suspended in beauty, power, solitude, and light. In the past several years, I have worked mostly in pastel, a medium which is having a renaissance. I love its luminous quality and the fact that you work with four hundred different colors and pastel sticks. I find it suits my need to work quickly and expressively and allows me to go back and refine at my own pace. I paint both plein air and in my studio from my own photographs. I generally paint in a series. As I spend much of my summer in East Penobscot Bay in Maine, I paint local subjects while there, often doing the same subject each year. I take workshops throughout the year and I go to the International Pastel Association Biannual meeting in Albuquerque, attending their workshops and demos of the world’s best pastel artists while I’m there. It is rewarding to add to my repertoire of techniques and see them reflected as I paint the same subjects again. I also do a lot of international travel and always take my pastels, so I have paintings in a wide variety of subjects from cityscapes of Havana, Paris and Venice, to elephants in South Africa. The pastel world is unusually hierarchical and organized, perhaps because it is having a renaissance. Not being much of a joiner, I resisted at first, but in the past year I have begun submitting work to various shows and have been pleased to receive recognition. I am a member of the Copley Society in Boston and represented by the Casco Bay Artisans Gallery in Portland, Maine.
Business Name: Anne Emerson
Phone: 857-919-3024
Email: anne.emerson@comcast.net