The muse is an active participant in Anne Martin McCool's art: "...kind of like a presence accompanying me everywhere and whispering things in my ear like, 'Look at that gorgeous purple border in that yard,' or 'Stop! Look at Mount Baker with the pink moon.' Sometimes the muse makes Anne work with the admonishment of "Get to your studio!" Anne always listens, even at three in the morning.
"Color really speaks to me," she says. "I feel like it is a gift and my responsibility is to respect and trust that." And McCool clearly does respect the conversation. Relying on her intuition, color usually presents itself first, before composition ever takes form.
JUMP RIGHT IN
Although her more abstract pieces are rooted in landscapes, McCool's process is to give the "subconscious expressive images that want to come" a place to land. To the artist, creativity is a constantly flowing river - she just goes to where the water is and jumps in.
Like other artists, her work is "often a direct reaction to the landscape I live in or my travels to new places." What is different about McCool's work is how she uses symbols of the land in a simplified way. "Exploring shape and color more than a specific explanatory picture, I am looking for emotion and the spirit of paint more than exactitude.
"I like to make beauty ... I like to make a place of peace or inner power or spiritual questing. Many times it is landscape that starts coming in and then dwellings or sanctuaries and just the joy of color and line dancing together. There are recurring symbols in my work like trees and vessels. I like to blend the inner and outer landscape."
McCool has been a resident of the Pacific Northwest for many years and our unique climate has proven to be a "fertile place to work" for her, she says. "It can be moody, broody and wet. It has a wonderful population of birds and some treasured bursts of light. When the weather is really bad the studio is even more enticing with its warmth and light and of course the colors I use help too." Her newest pieces reflect our glorious weather, but are contrasted with a Mexican-inspired palette. "My new work has rich layers of oil - lots of deep color and themes of earth and sky and home."
STICKS AND TUBES OF OIL
She likes to spend time with her media of choice, which these days is both stick and tube forms of oil, experimenting and learning its intricacies. Once she knows how the materials respond, she works at getting out of the way intellectually, allowing herself to open to deeper levels of feeling. "The paintings seem to talk to me once the first colors are put down and they tell me what is needed if I listen well. I rarely plan images although I do tend to work in series with one piece leading to the next. I love the physical part of painting - the textures and markings in surfaces. I have been fortunate to travel and gather more impressions to work with, from things such as ancient walls in France or pine-fired pottery in Japan."
Born in Kansas and raised in Southern California, McCool is the rare artist in the family. Inheriting both her love to draw and her left-handedness from her grandmother, she spent her early years doodling on walls (she swears her imaginary friend Sangra did it) and the borders of her school work. In high school, her talent was allowed to grow unobstructed as her teacher provided little instruction and "lots of time to draw alone in the supply closet!"
In time, McCool began to travel and learn from the artists in museums. She spent time living in New York City studying the works of Klee, Georgia O'Keefe, DeKooning, Kandinsky, and the Fauves. Time in Northern Arizona was inspirational as she was influenced by the Native American cultures, spending a considerable amount of time exploring ancient ruins, local arts and crafts and the desert landscape.
Next on the horizon for the artist might be revisiting part of her past. For many years, she only painted on Asian and other handmade papers, using watercolors and acrylics. With the rise of Sumi-e, there is a new interest in handmade papers. "There is a freedom of gesture and a different texture with Japanese papers and Sumi ink. I enjoy the play between them. My work continually changes but there are shapes, symbols, colors and textures which circle around again and again and feel like part of my visual language."
McCool's show runs from April 12-May 7, at the Patricia Rovzar Gallery, 118 Central Way, 889-4627, www.rovzargallery.com. Artist reception is April 12, 6-8 p.m.[[In-content Ad]]
