ANNE AUSTIN PEARCE

Anne Austin Pearce | Artist Statement

My art practice considers the infinite and varied ways we can know and not know, based on our sensual and somatic experiences; memory, cognition, and consciousness; dreams, mythologies, and archetypes; and systems within and beyond human control.

I work primarily on paper, and many of my drawings and paintings are of intimate scale, one-to-one with the body. In recent years, though, I have been experimenting with how collage works can erupt beyond the frame to become large-scale, site-specific, infinitely mutable interventions in space. Projects like Icarus (ongoing, 2023–present), comprising hundreds of organically shaped, brightly colored pattern-rich pieces, push the bounds of what a drawing is, and offer an immersive, exuberant physicality and materiality to the lineage of contemporary works on paper.

My process is intuitive and automatic, using an expressive vocabulary I have developed over thirty years of art-making. Acts of thinking, feeling, listening, interpreting, and remembering are captured in continuous flow; the resultant works are both an intimate archive of my experience, and composed invitations to viewers to rove a shared terrain of embodied curiosity and empathetic engagement with the world.

Ultimately, I hope to convey a sense of awe, respect, and utter delight in the company I keep with other living things on the planet. If I can simultaneously encourage others to cultivate and trust their own sensitive ways of knowing, then I will feel like I have made the mark I wanted to make in our fleeting time together.