Anne Spencer (BA Dip. Ed. - Macq Uni) is a Sydney based artist whose artwork continues to attract a strong following since her first exhibition ‘Luminosity’ in 2005 at Newport Artworks; a sellout of 24 paintings,
In 2012 she returned to her art practice, immersing herselfin the sensation of colour.
Corot, quoted by Wolf Kahn (USA 2013) famously said"an artist thinks with a brush in his hand".
She writes: I think with a brush in my hand. I need a brush to think. The process begins with that brush, the thinking begins with that brush and I paint what I feel about what I have witnessed. This witnessing is usually a celebration, a celebration of the joy of being there , expressed in oil paint from memory and imagination. Thus vibrant swatches of colours, warms and cools, juxtaposed, often mixed from just a few tubes of paint colour, strong line, free and expressive , movement; and where it fits- a whimsical edge to my work. JOY.
”One such witnessing which stimulated my eagerness to paint refugees' abandoned at sea-21st century', was an exhibition in NYC of a series of work on the Raft of the Medusa - by Martin Kippenberger, done not long before his death in 1996 at the age of 44. His work was based on Theodore Gericault's Raft of the Medusa (1819) , immortalising a French national tragedy in 1816 when a raft carrying 147 survivors from a sinking French frigate was cut loose from the lifeboats carrying the survivors with more status,--- with no oars, rudder, sail, food etc and left for 13 days abandoned at sea. 17 survived. A dreadful murder of innocent lives but in the hands of Kippenberger , a monumental tour de force of contemporary art. I loved it. It struck a nerve and I wanted to paint my version, so poignant today, 200 years later than the tragedy. Two versions inspired by these works are displayed in this Exhibition.