ANNE BUCKWALTER
Contemporary painting is a force that constantly reinvents itself. I think the purest forms of art are those that are executed when the degrees of separation between the working mind and the moving hand are minimal. A painting does not necessarily require a serious amount of labor or invested time to be successful, but rather it gains an agreeable quality from awkwardness, immediacy, and the denial of resolution.
I am currently working on a body of oil paintings which revolve around the reconstruction of childhood. The components of each painting are derived from a list of objects I associate with memories of being young. This covers a lexicon of recollected items: articles of clothing, furniture, household belongings, food, toys, ecetera. I am interested in the phenomenon that occurs when an object triggers the memory of an event—the connection that exists between two seemingly unrelated things, and the capability of memory to operate as transportation. I often rely on object symbolism to incite the narrative content of my work. The spaces I show in my paintings look like they have suffered deterioration, and this state of arrested decay acts as a reference to the decomposing nature of memory and the transience of time.
I define memory as the sensual information retained from past experience. The development of these images is based on the process of deciding which elements of a memory to include, which to leave out, and which to embellish. A memory is never an accurate interpretation of what situation actually transpired. I am interested in portraying this fickle nature of physical remembering, vulnerable to change over time and intrusion of emotion. Therefore, I welcome the introduction of non sequitur objects and elements which seem strange and out of place, distorted, isolated, and unexpected.
I think the most successful paintings are those that betray the viewer—that at first seem pleasant and playful but after a prolonged amount of time grow dark, absurd or unsettling. In this transition a painting becomes more than just an image.
Anne was born and raised in the suburbs of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. In January of 2010, she graduated with a BFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. During her undergraduate program, she spent a semester abroad in Rome and has been an experimental landscape painter ever since. She is now an MFA student at Maine College of Art, where she works in painting, illustration, and occasional sculptural projects. A spelling bee enthusiast, Anne is also an avid writer and serves on the fiction editorial board for Philadelphia Stories magazine. She lives in Portland with a bonsai garden and an enormous cat.