The Library is pleased to partner with the Guild of Berkshire Artists to present a demonstration with oil painter Anne Wickham Smith on Tuesday, June 29, 2021 at 3:00 p.m. Anne will demonstrate painting outdoors with oil. Anne is inspired by the outdoors and begins many paintings outside. She has taken workshops from famous artists. Her years in the film industry have given her a unique talent for composition, an understanding of light, and an ability to work productively out in the field. She has painted all over New England, France, Italy, Ireland, and England.
Click here to join the meeting. Passcode: 402237.
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
When people walk into my studio they often sigh with relief. It is a sigh of appreciation for the calm beauty and serenity they see in my work. Working in the film business, I learned to constrict images to rectangles, paying attention to every detail, and organizing all of them together cohesively within a limited time frame. These were useful tools when I first picked up a brush – until I figured out how opposite they were to my idea of painting. When I paint, I have to think beyond the frame, using the image to suggest, not define. In painting, you work toward deleting detail, leaving the viewer to fill in and imagine. It is a slow art form, and one that develops with stroke-by-stroke intention. The beauty of a painting is as much the texture and rhythm as it is the beauty of the scene itself – qualities I appreciate in other painters. I have painted at my best when I have defined the light, deleted the unnecessary, and created both variety and continuity.