Anne. D - Art & Self-Expression -

I was born in the Alps in 1965, and lucky to be raised in Provence by the Mediterranean where the sun almost always shines. So perhaps it is no coincidence that Cézanne would be one of my favorite painters.

Thanks to my parents who often took me traveling with them, I developed a strong interest for foreign cultures at a fairly young age. At 8 years old, I traveled to North Africa for the first time. This is where I learned to paint on silk and when I started to explore with pigments, fabrics, and vibrant colors then continued to do so over the next 10 years or so. To this day, silk painting and traveling continue to be a great source of inspiration that transpires through my art both directly and indirectly.

My budding "art career" came to a full stop at the end of puberty as I started studying Business after earning a Masters in Physics & Chemistry. I then moved to California where I found a couple of rather serious marketing jobs. I still traveled, but for all these years, I had given up art completely. After 10 years of total abstinence I was ready to muster all the creative energy that had built up in me, and finally made the change that brought me back to art. It is only six years ago, after earning my Master's in Architecture at UC Berkeley, that I decided to dedicate myself to painting again.

My formal training in Art consists in a few figure drawing, watercolor, color theory, and visual-studies classes taken at Laney College, the University of Washington, and UC Berkeley over a period of 6 years or so. During that time, I was incredibly lucky to study under some of the most talented and dedicated teachers I have ever met. A couple of photography semesters with UW Professor John Stamets changed my way of looking at light, shadows, and colors forever. While searching for new avenues of creative self-expression, I also developed a great interest in ceramics and print-making which I had the opporunity to practice at Laney College in Oakland.

At this stage in my painting career, my work is still joyfully eclectic and quite exploratory in nature. I purposely give myself a lot of freedom in these explorations to unlearn some of the constricting concepts I had somehow collected along the way and to allow my formerly tamed imagination to run wild again.

Anne.D