CONTACT
anne.h.stevens at gmail.com
Please reach out about pricing for available work or to set up a studio visit. I work with art advisors and consultants around the country. I keep my available work up to date here on my site. In the Chicago area, you can come visit my studio in Evanston or see my work at Arch in Winnetka.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anne Hayden Stevens is a painter and printmaker living outside Chicago, IL.
I have an MA in Visual Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, and a BFA in Printmaking and Drawing from California College of the Arts. I grew up in Northern California. Prior to coming to Illinois, I spent ten years in Seattle, where I taught drawing & digital media at the University of Washington.
My work ranges across painting, drawing, printmaking and public art. My work has been exhibited in Chicago at the Hyde Park Art Center, the Evanston Art Center, the Governor's State University Art Gallery, the Koehnline Museum of Art, and at the Harold Washington Library Center during Chicago Artists Month. Public art pieces are located on Rainier Avenue South in Seattle, the Seattle Municipal Tower, and the University of Washington.
RESUME
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work looks at the unwritten histories of women through landscape painting and collage. History and painting marginalize women. I study in these margins and make pictures of moments not collected in existing histories.
There are two avatars who appear regularly in my paintings: The Philosopher and Narcissus. The Philosopher is a character that surfaced in 2018 as I started studying Chinese landscape painting. The English language texts on Chinese landscape painting hardly contain any women, as artists or subjects of paintings. I turned to a women-focused resource, The Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women, and started reading the history of female poets, artists, writers and intellectuals in China. The Philosopher is a manifestation of these women. She does in my paintings the things that men typically do in Chinese painting: walk, study, and sit in reflection.
Narcissus has been in my work since 2016. Narcissism came up frequently during the run-up to the 2016 election, and I started thinking about the gender implications of narcissism. I thought about Caravaggio’s famous painting of Narcissus, which is a tightly framed image of a white male Narcissus and his reflection. There is some irony, and humor, in imagining Narcissus as a woman, struggling to balance her search for herself with the realities of daily life. My series of paintings about Narcissus and her never-ending search for self-reflection continues in this exhibition.
As my study of Chinese painting progresses, I am realizing that both these characters, Narcissus and the Philosopher, are ultimately searching for enlightenment. Our personal searches for enlightenment are life-long, messy, and usually unwritten. This braids these paintings back into my career-long project: making work about the beauty and complexity of our unwritten histories.
MATERIALS
My oil paintings are oil on gessoed panel. I protect my paintings with a cold wax varnish. I do not use any turps or thinners in my process: I work with artist-grade walnut oil as my medium.
My archival prints are large scale digital collages that remix fragments of my completed paintings with 3D models, photographs and drawing. I build the digital images as vector-based artwork so the collages can be scaled and applied to walls and building surfaces.
I love to collaborate with galleries, designers and consultants, so please reach out!