Why I paint...
From the first moment I chose to be a painter, I have revered painting’s ability to reveal connections, meaning and truth through the gestalt of a visual experience. Identity is a complex undertaking. When we find ourselves in the presence of the real and authentic spirit of life, our realization cannot be contained by singular descriptive tool.
Art can act as a conduit for the eternal and the transcendent. Human vulnerability gives the soul an opening to know life beyond our biographies. The process of making art has become an act of faith and trust for me. I am fascinated by the power of language and how it is used to construct a reality. We are immersed in language but rarely look squarely at it or understand from where it originates. Verbal language is always a translation, at a minimum one step from the authentic visceral firsthand experience. All of the Arts create an original experience for the observer. But in our age, the speed we consume media and integrate cultural memes into a daily vernacular actually acts as a barrier to an authentic moment. I strive to create pieces that are so honest and lyrical that they become a portal so to speak. A “thin place” or “thin time” as the Celts refer to such profound moments set apart from time. I work abstractly to reduce the language I use to the Pure Form of 2-D design components including color, line, form, illusionistic space and the materials themselves.
This new body of work is built out of a crisis of love. Not a personal love as much as a love affair of claiming what is essential in life. As a child I dreamed of worlds far away from my native New England. My day was anchored in barn chores and stewardship of animals. In the past eight years I have been fortunate to travel to Syria, Jordon, France, Spain, and most recently to Patagonia. It is my habit to photograph and print hard copies, stacking them in the studio for reference. The photographs act as record of my observations, often of the relationship of light, pattern and palette. I want to be able to obfuscate the source to the extent that the viewer is asked to interpret the visual form unencumbered by narrative that is naturally present in representational art. While one might identify an influence, association or memory, the painting is still allowed the breath of time to unfold and hold this moment for the observer.
My core interest lies in how we explain life to ourselves. How, as a people, we structure meaning in our world. I believe it is language that fills this role. My pieces are constructed formally by observing and mining the structures I am surrounded by and the emotional climate I live within. Conceptually I must circle around and around the questions I pose. I can fundamentally only speak in metaphor. It is not unlike how a poet constructs a space for the reader to vicariously experience another’s heart or spirit. The words must shimmer, catching the glimmer of human consciousness just outside our focus. An expression of an interiority that remains inherently a wild experience and an invocation for the spirit within. Only then can it create an opening or a gap that may lay open pure spirit and present an authentic moment.
The closer we get to an authentic beauty, the more it becomes ephemeral and dematerializes before us. I connect to the universe through, music, images and silence. I follow a trail left for me, leading me back to a secret unwatched place. A blending of perception and inner knowing. The moment when pure observation becomes our vehicle crossing toward healing and grace. A more solid and inhabitable place of wholeness.
"Upside down, inside out and whole"
Immediate awareness and fellowship with direct experience holds a peace for me. Horses were my first pathway to a inner knowing. Painting and Art more profoundly direct my attention to this inner dimension. The predominate experience of all communication or relationship is ineffable. It may stimulate thought and analysis, but it is only known in sensation and a continuous flow of insight to how we relate and view the world. A part of the whole, heroic, simultaneously a microcosm housed within the macrocosm. Upside down, inside out and whole none the less.
Artist Bio
Anne Faber was born in Junction City, Kansas and raised in Litchfield County Connecticut. She attended Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York where she earned highest honors in Studio Arts from her graduating class. She then then completed her MFA at Syracuse University and was honored with a full scholarship and the George Vandersluis Award for Outstanding Graduate Student in painting.
Annie has had the good fortune to live on both coasts and the Southeast while she worked as a Visual Arts instructor at The Thacher School and The Lovett School. She moved with her family to Madison, Wisconsin in 2002 and shortly thereafter made Chicago, Illinois her home.
As an active studio Artist since the mid 1980’s, Annie Faber has honed a personal painting style that is created with multiple layers of saturated chroma laid down in thin glazes which seem to shift and breathe as the viewer contemplates the pieces. Annie is honored to be included in both public and private collections. Her paintings have been acquired for permanent collections in both Skidmore College and Syracuse University. She has additionally been honored with fellowships at The Nexus Contemporary Art Center and Artist Residency Retreats and has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in galleries & exhibitions in the Southeast, New England and the Midwest.
