Anne Allen b. 1960 — With a light hand, Anne Allen creates works on paper reminiscent of Helen Frankenthaler’s style. Her soft, colorful works seem to move off the wall, beckoning us into the movement of her gesture across the page. Allen’s works reference domestic items such as doilies, lace, floral wallpaper and hairnets, is abstracted at a large scale, endowing the objects with a presence beyond their utilitarian purpose. These impressions of seemingly innocent objects are subverted with a minimalist hand, creating intimate drawings with nostalgic effects.

Other works by Allen hang on the wall yet are not flesh with it. As such, the works create a tension with the space, hanging against the wall but moving into the space of the viewer. In Allen’s installations, we see her paper works come to life, having a tactile and powerful presence to them. Allen’s most recent works were done on chiffon, and Cris Worley notes that these works have “a haunting quality that hints at nostalgia of place.” By expanding her use of materials, Allen explores the temporal quality of pictorial space.

Throughout her career, Allen has constantly evolved her practice with insights from her travels. From childhood road trips, through adult hikes, to geocaching sites, Allen has found a plethora of images and stimuli that she explores in her work. Allen delicately executes her marks in graphite, watercolor, ink, charcoal, gouache, or pastel to achieve the tactile qualities that draw viewers in to follow her gestures. Allen’s work also draws inspiration generally from the conceptual maps of Julie Mehretu, Brice Marden’s layered loops, and El Anatsui’s quilts of found materials.

Anne Allen grew up in Fort Worth, TX, and has lived and worked in Los Angeles, CA, Portland, OR and New York’s Hudson Valley before returning to Texas in 1999. She received her M.F.A. in metals from the State University of New York at New Paltz and her B.F.A. in painting and printmaking from the University of Texas at Austin. She has shown her work extensively in solo and group exhibitions throughout Texas as well as New York and was a five-time finalist for the Hunting Art Prize. A curator and arts administrator, Allen served as Director of the Arlington Museum of Art (AMA), and as Executive Director of The Old Jail Art Center in Albany, Texas. She is currently a Public Art Project Manager with the Arts Council of Fort Worth, Texas.