The Visual Poem

I find the source and inspiration for my art in the things I see in the real world, the things I see in my imagination, and the things I dream.  I feel and remember them in my body.  Making art is most exciting when I work from three dimensional real life; a model, a still life, a landscape, an interior.  Visual reality doesn’t bind me.  I find the poetic image in my heart, sometimes poignant or impossible, curious or exciting, humorous or tragic.  Frequently, I choose to distort or alter the image I am viewing to emphasize spatial relationships, to increase aesthetic interest or to dramatize emotions.  I also work from photographs, images I find in on the internet, or in books, magazines and newspapers, sometimes images that I have photographed.  Usually I combine images from various sources to create a composition on canvas.  I also work from memory, a more difficult process because my memories are impressions rather than complete pictures.  I usually fail to notice the details.  So when I paint my imagination fills the canvas.   My mind’s eye is the cauldron where I cook the composition of forms and lines, and spice it with light, shadow and color.  Psychologically, my most profound paintings usually originate and develop from responding to paint I’ve smeared randomly on the canvas.  The brush strokes suggest images that reveal themselves to me in fuller and fuller detail as I paint. 

I show a painting like a chef serves up a meal, with the hope that my work will satisfy the guests’ appetites and delight their senses.

AnneKarin Glass

Visual Thinker

Still Life

I love painting still life.  They offer the opportunity to set up color juxtapositions and visual problems that I’d not readily find in nature, purple plums and orange persimmons with pink flowers reflected in a silver tray or green limes and ripe apricots in a glass bowl on striped cloth.  I love to explore the shapes and colors of peppers, the rhythm of a bunch of bananas or the many shades of white in apple slices, the roundness of onions and the fuzzy roots on leeks.  I love the way the color builds up when I paint flowers, iris, nasturtium, red poppy, apple blossoms, Alstromerius.  It is a challenge discovering how to paint the folds in cloth and lace, and the transparency and high lights in glass, and reflections in metal.  I chuckle with uncommon subjects like mailboxes and red shoes and fire hydrants and swim fins.  And I’m fascinated with segmented objects, pumpkins, umbrella, play with light.

AnneKarin Glass

Visual Thinker