Anne Devaney, “Late Summer 2008”
Anne Devaney Artist Statement
Broadly speaking, nature is my subject. I’m trying to create a visual equivalent for the look of the world and my experience of it. While doing that I also hope to create a beautiful object that is intriguing and even fun
to look at.
The “cut paper” method evidenced in this show evolved over a long period of time and was shaped by many influences, among them: a primary concern with precise color, a keen interest in textiles and mosaics, artists too numerous to mention, and a desire to capture imagery that was often transitory. Subjects that are available for only a few days at best, and often for only a few minutes, require an “indirect” method. The reality of my life also did not allow for hours of uninterrupted studio time. Thus, a method that was broken down into various phases was essential. In Preparation for Painting (Oxford University Press 1954), a wonderful little book full of good advice, both practical and wise, Lynton Lamb writes that “The artist invents for himself the skill he needs.” An important part of one’s skill is a method, which also needs to be invented, a method that is consistent with one’s goals and one’s life.
These images were created out of paper that I painted. In all but one, the color is oil paint on gessoed paper. The one exception, #9, is acrylic paint on paper. All were finally painted with a matte varnish.
Response by Jonathan Weinert
As a happy child who had an unhappy childhood, I needed to invent a method, by means of which I could construct a series of more or less coherent images, out of small colored fragments, to represent a life. My canvas was the campus of a private girls’ high school in a posh New England suburb. My father taught there, so I had the run of the place. Rich abandoned houses overhung by ancient beech and maple trees, manicured fields deserted in the finest weather, permission to ramble at will beyond the reach of the other troubling neighborhood kids — these encouraged my taste for depopulated landscapes, for disappearance shading into disembodiment. My family lived with no visible daily connection to our working-class mongrel-Baltic Jewish roots, nor were we under obligations to the old-money hyper-Protestant social order which surrounded and ignored us. I was unclaimed: gloriously and disastrously free.
I remember a small ornamental tree, the name of which I never knew, whose vinelike leaf-covered branches grew out of the top of the trunk and hung down like hair, brushing and in some cases growing back into the ground. You could get inside and sit with your back against the trunk, seeing out without being seen. One summer midnight I took a handful of friends with me into the tree. We were long-haired Pre-Raphaelitish freaks, a few years too young for the killings and the protests and the draft. Nothing touched us. We were bright-eyed and ready for any miracle, silent inside the tree, until Andy blew a few notes on his flute. We watched as stars clocked slowly over the green-black leaves.