Anne Neely — Painter

For the last twenty-five years I've begun most of my paintings with a “pour” and used the color as the starting point. The pours are always one of the great “surprises” in my work. I have control only over the colors I choose and the general idea it represents. I work into the painting using brush and palette knife. When I make marks or strokes over the pours, it is because I know that each mark is unique, even though the process is repetitive and will take me somewhere. Over the years, I've noticed the more I paint, the more I just “follow” where the brush takes me. The subject matter for these paintings for years has been based on cherishing the beauty of the natural world as well as acknowledging the foreboding that threatens our troubled planet.

When I heard I had ovarian cancer my dialogue with paint and canvas shifted inward. At first, I made paintings that were poured “explosions” to mimic the tumor that had opened inside of me. Then, after a year of treatment, I felt like I needed protection from the “troubles” in the world and began to make paintings in which vertical strips of color, like ribbons, served as blocked sections so one could only see between them. In this way these “veils” or “ribbons” evoked a see-through world from a distance, to see the “light.” Instead of the many years of painting landscape, horizontality, my canvases are now vertical. They have become more personal and figurative.

It’s early yet, and every three months I hear if I am to move forward in life or into cancer. So, the wonder grows in my life and in my paintings. Each time I continue remission, I paint the wonder of the light, hopefully for the viewer to see (and feel) what is so often forgotten, that the gift of life is always before us.

ELIZABETH MOSS GALLERIES, PORTLAND, MAINE