Annie Owens with Lizz Lopez, Karen Hydendahl, Edith Waddell, Daria Theodora
August 4 – 28, 2017
Opening Reception: Friday, August 4th, 8-11 PM
Annie Owens A Place Worth knowing
Annie Owens lights her watercolor paintings as if they were vintage photographs or film stills, giving them a film-noir vibe that adds melodrama. Here, we find her characters at odds with themselves in a remote world, riding their bicycles or sitting at the edge of an empty road that travels in two directions. Even a little black house, a recurring image in her work, floats over a cross roads and is destined to stay there until a decision is made.
The figures in my work are an amalgamation of all the women and girls I’ve known, for better or worse, molded into a generic form in generic dresses that I sometimes use to embody a thought, a feeling or attitude. For example, the figure in “Encroachment II”, who dwarfs her surroundings, represents the rather arrogant human imprint on rural landscapes. While the figure in “Cordova” who is caught mid-turn presumably to move away from the viewer into the distance portrays either hesitation or a sense of finality. I painted this after a visit to my home state of Alabama with a random side trip to the small town of Cordova that to my knowledge has no connection to my family. I think I was looking for hiking trails. The little town just stuck with me.
Wormwood is self-explanatory for the most part. A biblical reference to the apocalypse where the figure is the 3rd angel just before blowing her trumpet, signaling the coming of the wormwood star that falls to earth poisoning the earth’s lakes and rivers. Atypical of what I normally choose to do with her art, this is an obvious environmental statement and given the political climate and literal climate change, I think it’s timely.
