ANN KNICKERBOCKER

Artist Statement, 2025

Painting has become more challenging for me with time. It might just be me, or it might be that I am listening to the paintings more carefully these days. My first individual show was in Valetta, Malta, in 1990, and the gestures in that work were broad and wild. Every year I seem to have added layers to the abstract structure of my paintings. Because paintings are constructs, I have decided that these layers are useful because they mark the path of aesthetic change over time.

I tend to go into the studio with an idea: the way we live, a poem, another painting, a place, something vaguely remembered from a dream. In the end, the painting won’t necessarily adhere to that initial idea; sometimes the work takes an unexpected (and sometimes rocky) path. I work on my paintings in groups and each painting in a series is tested against the others; I paint over or destroy a lot of work. A series ends once I know what I am doing.  

I want my paintings to feel fresh to me and to the viewer, and I see this way of stopping one grouping and starting another as a strength.  I hope to keep each painting intriguing on close inspection and striking from a distance.