Artist Statement
Anne Walker
April 9, 2007

Painting is breathing, feeling, seeing, speaking, wondering, and knowing.  Choosing to paint what I see everyday over and over and over again is real.  Getting to know a place intimately, its colors, moods, seasons, lights, darks, and temperature, through the medium of paint parallels living in a long-term relationship.  Trying to keep it fresh, when it feels well-worn, challenges my endurance.  Looking for something new, dear, lovely and good in what sometimes seems predictable, cyclical and sometimes difficult requires commitment.  It often surprises me with moments of unexpected beauty.  It grounds me with the sameness of the cycle, yet causes wonder at the newness of the details.

Nature provides food for my imagination.  Living provides ideas that drive the work.  What I can do with paint on canvas perennially challenges and excites me.  I paint because I have to.  I paint the landscape because I love the look of the rural area, where I live, and the process of making images that represent what I see and feel, while I am experiencing a place.   Life happens, while I am painting.  Painting must be made to happen in the midst of everyday living.  Living and painting become a co-celebration of the natural world on the canvas.

Studio View Series #2
The current series of work, Studio View Series #2, I-XXXII, came into being through the friendship of two people, Jen Voss and Doug Small.  The view from the studio window on Doug Small’s farm was shared by Jen, Doug and myself one morning, when she stopped by, and he was sitting in his worn, red leather chair.  After Jen mentioned that the barn roof had been damaged in the storm the night before, she suggested I paint the view out the studio window.   Doug visited, almost each morning I painted, after he had driven through the fields with Alice, his black lab, running behind his four-wheel drive Subaru station wagon.  Jen would visit with Doug and enjoy the views of his farm.  After he passed on last spring, I knew I needed to keep painting the view in the midst of daily living.   Jen missed him.  I missed his visits and talks of the past.  The landscape stays, yet changes with the passing seasons, fluctuations in weather, time of day, and subtle shifts in light minute by minute.  Thank you, Mrs. Voss and Mr. Small, for your gifts of inspiration and the view.  Thank you, to the Small family, especially Dickie, for inviting me to stay to continue painting the view. 

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more Anne Walker art work