White Anemone #1791 by Anne Salas
Anne Salas

Artist Statement

My botanical oil paintings are a kind of iconic portraiture. European travels exploring ancient cathedrals and some principal museums have created a deeper awareness of the historical context and spiritual connotation of portraiture with gold leaf illumination. I am compelled to distill perceptions of organic forms; botanical life being infinitely diverse as people are infinitely diverse~ driving infinite exploration. Incorporating multi-tonal layers of oil paint, graphite, wax, etc. in transparent liquidity and textured impasto. Sensitive draftsmanship combined with energetic application of paint illuminate delicate, fibrous, inner workings. I strive to create recognition, an instinctive connection to the core in each of us where we find strength and nourishment. Rich, bold colors reflect years living in South America and a desire to pursue and evoke a sense of universality or presence through color, line, form and spatial relationships. Explorations through the Alps and Dolomites, fishing the lakes, watercoloring the wildflowers and landscapes there and at the world’s oldest medicinal botanical garden (Padua) have all fed and inspired my paintings. Years as a glassblower have fostered the use of gravity to move paint, creating a refracted light quality reminiscent of hot liquid glass. There is an urgency and vibrancy in the breath and life this gives to my work.

Anne Salas’s botanical oil paintings meld depths of dimensionality with planes of saturated colors, simmering amidst richly embodied forms. Elliptical and organic elements are sensuously rendered and intriguingly suggested. There is vivacity and strength conjured with light and movement, energy with an orchestration of paint in motion, at times with expanses of gold leaf. Artist, curator and educator Mary Moquin writes “Anne Salas’s florals are bursting with life, yet the vibrant color is balanced by the delicate linear work she incorporates into each painting. These flowers are bold yet tender, there is a beautiful sensitivity to their life force. There is strength and resilience in their blooms held aloft by their tenuous stems.” Educated at Temple University's Tyler School of Art, PA The Museum School in Boston Art Institute of Boston Goddard College in VT Provincetown Art Association and Museum in Provincetown MA, Castle Hill in Truro, MA, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown MA. Greatest influences/teachers are Selina Trieff and Robert Henry of New York and Provincetown. They are both former Hans Hoffman students. Anne's work is in the permanent collection of the Cape Cod Museum of Art. Private collections include the Cape Cod Five Savings Bank as well as numerous collections throughout Great Britain, Sweden, Germany, Australia and South America.

White Anemone #1791
Anne Salas
Oil on canvas with 23K Gold Leaf
72" x 37"     Framed: 73" x 38"
2021
$10,700
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