Ann Wallace

BORN
October 1954 Midwest, USA

EDUCATION
Milwaukee Area Technical College
University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee
George Brown University- Toronto
Colorado Women’s College – Denver

STATEMENT
The Aesthetic of Ann Wallace’s work lays in its silence. She has incited a solitary transaction between spectator and painting. A private and intimate meeting, encouraging an undisturbed absorption of image.

Using the canvas as a single plane, stressing the two-dimensional character of painting and rejecting illusions of depth and gesture brushwork. Wallace applies colors in blocks that span the entire surface, suggesting that the composition may be yet a detail of a larger field.

The architecture of the canvas is divided laterally and horizontally into zones of color contrasting tonal relationships. Using predominantly dry earth tones of sienna’s, sage, ochre’s that impart an illusion of transparency and translucence in surface.

Veils of color lend a mysteriousness to Wallace’s work, accentuated at times by an oriental symbol or typeset letter hidden or boldly displayed within the composition, as if hints in secret code to a larger message. These letters are placed deliberately as a focal point to exalt mind above the banal contingencies and trivializations of social life to a place more spiritual, contemplative, and intimate.