RAIR | 2003-04

Ann Piper | Selinsgrove, PA

Ann Piper was born in New London, Connecticut. She earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art and an MFA from New Mexico State University. Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited widely across the United States for the past 20 years. Her artwork appeared in ‘The Perception of Appearance: A Decade of American Contemporary Figurative Drawing’ at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Washington, and more recently, in the 4th International Painting Annual at MANIFEST in Cincinnati, Ohio. She participated in the Jentel Artist Residency Program in April 2017. Currently, she is an associate professor of studio art at Susquehanna University.

"When an artist is alive, he becomes an inventive, daring, self-expressing creature.  He becomes interesting to other people.  He disturbs, upsets, enlightens and opens ways for a better understanding."  Robert Henri

In my work, I use portraiture as a vehicle for creating a series of personal vignettes.  Always formal, and often theatrical, each portrait serves as an assertion of a state of being.  They are artificial moments, certainly, but are invented in support of very real sentiments.  I am constantly examining human relationships through these devised images: assigning roles, removing context, arranging objects, and offering it all up for reinterpretation.  By employing metaphor and my own sense of visual symbolism, I develop a "poetic description" of the kind of presence I wish to convey.  Rather than set out to reveal a complete narrative, which demands a literal translation, I suggest a mood – something that can be understood on different levels by different people.  Thus my concept is distilled, the individual circumstances of my investigations are disguised and the work speaks not only to my own, but to the human experience.

Ann Piper, 2004

Studio Exhibition

May 28, 2004