Anna Kirkpatrick’s work is rooted in an understanding of the “hand as the ever-present tool of human feeling.” Her tactile pieces offer respite from a hurry-up, too-busy world. Kirkpatrick works slowly--building layers. Selecting from and shaping higgledy-piggledy piles of materials--wood, cloth, paper, cardboard, pigments, paints, dyes, twine and wax--she develops a language between sculpture and painting. As she tears apart, scrapes down, repaints, patches, sews and mends, she relies upon intuition and accident to impart notions of contemplation, inwardness and restraint.
Kirkpatrick’s “meditative cooking” process is enriched
by her observation of the faded ancient quarter of Autun, France, where
she lives and maintains two studios—an earthbound one for dusty woodworking
and a luminous attic space for painting and collage. Equally, her works
reveal the modern influences of Roger Bissière, Torres-Garcia, Mark
Rothko and Agnes Martin as well as primitive, folk and applied arts, ancient
icons and altarpiece
panels.
American-born artist Kirkpatrick studied painting and art history in the United
States and Italy. Before moving to France in 1988 she worked in piano restoration,
theatre scenic arts and as a docent at The Phillips Collection in Washington,
D.C. Also for many years in Washington (working under the pseudonym of Annie-get-your-gun)
she served cocktails and Reuben sandwiches at the legendary One Step Down
Jazz Club. She has been the recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship, a Camargo
Foundation fellow in Cassis, France, and twice a guest at The Tyrone Guthrie
Centre in Ireland. Her works are exhibited regularly in France and Switzerland
and are represented in many American, Latin American and European private
collections. On two occasions her paintings were acquired by the city of Geneva,
and a partly retrospective exhibition of her work was presented at Musée
Rolin in Autun in 2004.
L’Anna
et l’Armoire,
a short video about the chest constructions, can be viewed on the site.
