Arbor, 1998 Anne Appleby is classified in the art world as a “young” or “emerging” artist, though she has been exhibiting her paintings for more than twenty years since she received her B.F.A. in 1977 from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Her work is often shown with that of “reductive” painters, but it does not exactly fit into the “pure” painting philosophy held by many of them.
August, 1996 Although Appleby’s paintings are composed of abstract panels each essentially a single color, she thinks of them as landscapes. She carefully observes particular plants or particular seasons and uses their colors as they grow and change in works that are particular to them.
“As I work, I develop an inner dialogue about the meaning of what I’m doing,” she says. “But I can’t paint that. I can’t even speak it. It’s denser than my activity.” What she does paint is glowing fields of color that seem as alive as the plants she speaks of in her titles.
Sage, 1993 Before attending the Art Institute in San Francisco, Appleby spent a fifteen year apprenticeship with an Ojibwe Indian elder in Montana. She learned patient observation of nature from him.
Now, she lives at the edge of a national forest in St. Helena, Montana. She shows her paintings primarily at San Francisco’s Gallery Paule Anglim. She has worked in printmaking since 1997 at Crown Point Press.