Gallery at Somes Sound | Anne Ireland
Anne Ireland's work continues to reflect her complicated and ardent relationship with color and space. It also reveals the ongoing dialog that she has with the Maine landscape and the beauty of Maine’s unique light.. Through a process that requires as much looking as it does layering paint, Ireland works towards revealing her own connection to place. Ireland's intent is to transform the iconic into the newly discovered, transporting the viewer to a place that is at once familiar and foreign, a place that asks questions and demands answers, a place of infinite possibility. Painting landscapes, especially scenes from the saltwater farm in Maine where Ireland spent every summer since childhood, allows her to explore these complex relationships. The great expanses of hay fields, noble stands of pines and ever-changing skies of sun and storm have become the foundation of this exploration. Rather than a literal translation of the natural world she inhabits, Ireland strives to capture the emotion that these scenes evoke. The landscape is a form from which she can play and invent. It allows Ireland to hang her paint, her marks, her color on it, creating something new in the process.
"My first memories are of deep, saturated colors. Family lore says that my mother encouraged me to crawl by placing a glass bowl of M&Ms in front of me. You might argue that I was enticed by chocolate, but I know it was the colors that compelled me. Later, there was nothing more exciting than a pristine box of crayons. I colored with intent and energy, pressing hard to get the most opacity and to release their in waxy scent. Though I was urged to use the crayons more gently, I wanted the intensity of feeling that strong color provided. It gave me joy and satisfied a deep need within me. It still does." Anne Ireland
