Anne Barnes
Washington, DC
Anne Barnes is a mixed media artist, artist bookmaker, arts educator, and graphic designer
Message
Anne Barnes was born in Columbus, OH, but spent her formative years growing up in Pittsburgh, PA, and is an artist, arts educator, and graphic designer living and working in Washington, DC. She holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology from George Washington University; an MA in Publications Design from the University of Baltimore; and an MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University, College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. She has worked in book publishing, as a freelance graphic designer, as a Bookmaking Associate at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, is a teaching artist, volunteers for multiple arts organizations, and pursues her personal art practice in the studio.
Statement
Using cultural cues and collected ephemera absorbed from my world, I create artworks that are process driven and that collaborate with chance. By combining a high-keyed color palette, expressive gesture, and symbolic mark-making, my multi-layered work is grounded in the informality of the unstructured painterly mark and the unadulterated visual language of graphic form. The result is the abstracted visualizations of my memories, emotions, and varied perspectives that merge to become metaphors for exploration into themes of human nature, popular culture, feminism, and motherhood. My intention is to leave a trace of the artist in all that I create and to connect with the viewer through the empathetic power of language, chroma, and vivid mark-making.