Andrew Gaynor, ‘A 21st Century artist’, Giclee print essay, 2012
Essay subject:
Tropical scene, 2003, oil on canvas, 125.0 x 177.0 cm, private collection, Melbourne
I clearly recall the first time I saw one of Anne’s images. I had started working at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in early 1995 and promptly took myself into the storage racks to begin familiarising myself with the Collection. On one rack was this vibrant drawing of people at a caravan park, clustered around tents and barbeques, and executed in clear linear fashion. A s a fan of British cartoons of the 1950s, it reminded me of the well-fed and gentle wit of Norman Thelwell, ‘the unofficial artist of the English countryside.’
Fast forward to 2000 and I’m in Melbourne working for Gould Galleries when in walks a woman who identifies herself as Anne Marie Graham. Her drawing springs to mind, she expresses amazement that I recall it – and a long partnership has its genesis. I have now been working for Anne since about 2003 in a steady capacity, usually once a week on a Wednesday morning assisting, administrating, corresponding, hanging paintings or wrapping them. There’s also the varnishing, tracing, underpainting and even – rarely – an inclusion by my own hand, such as the small dog in Children’s games, 2006. Overall, there is friendship, the verbal sparring, the shared observations and insights and, most importantly, the platter of cold meats and salads for lunch. This may seem a trite inclusion but the sharing of meals and the allied conversation are equally crucial to Anne’s view of the world. You see this in the people who occupy her paintings, specifically their attitudes, the way one slumps his shoulders a s he talks to a pretty girl, how a toddler reaches out to pull up a plant whilst her mother’s back is turned, how a small hound has a stand-off with a hissing black swan. It is Anne’s alertness to human behaviour that underlies much of her paintings’ charm.
And her works are, indeed, charming. Not to use that word as a negative; rather as a verb, that they do indeed charm. Viewers get drawn in to discover the finer details and find themselves enveloped by their minutiae. Whilst acknowledging the amazing effort involved in her magnus opus A garden for all seasons, 1987 (Collection: Victorian Arts Centre, Melbourne), I have a stronger attraction to her lush scenes from far-north Queensland, perfectly encapsulated by such paintings as the verdant vision of Tropical scene, 2003. It is in this work and its thematic companions that the lazy application of the term ‘naïve’ gets a real run for its money. All her paintings are individually designed and tightly composed abstractions (or meditations) on nature. Colours are graded, in some cases intensified, in others, muted or pushed way beyond their limits in others still. I have often used the word ‘audacious’ to describe Anne’s use of colour and here I shall use it again. For her exhibition at the Gippsland Art Gallery in 2012, I got my chance to be so by siting her paintings on burnt orange and citric green walls. The effect, not surprisingly, was electric and, even more importantly, contemporary. A totally different audience got to see her work in a setting that spoke directly to the paintings’ strengths and not a few younger artists exciting possibilities where many established curators only see obstacles as a result of their own blinkered philosophies of what art is or is not. They just refuse to comprehend Anne’s work and are poorer as a result.
Anne Gaynor
Curator and writer
Assistant to Anne Marie Graham since 2003