Biography

"I'm looking for a certain sound in the piece. When I find it, I know the piece is alive. I'm interested in the auditory nature of color, and the ambiguous push and pull of negative and positive space: is this a figure or a field? Is this a painting, or a doorway that I walk through? Or is it a doorway through which something comes—some sound, or color, or memory? That doorway between the seen and the unseen, the known and the unknown, that's what draws me. I'm interested in embodiment, not representation."

Annie in Venice, 2005 Biennale

Annie Arrasmith was born in Union, Mississippi in 1947, and grew up along the Mississippi River. Much of the imagery and color in her work traces back to the land, the water, the woods and the Cajun culture in which she grew up. Major influences include Cezanne ("who gave me permission to see for myself"), Chagall ("who gave me permission to be dramatic, especially with color"), architect Christopher Alexander ("who taught me to see my work as a living object in a living environment"), Louisiana artist Clyde Connell ("who showed me it was OK to make art with mud") and traditional textiles including kilims, Javanese and Sumatran sarongs, and early Turkish carpets.