Volumes

Artists: Anna Jannack

VOLUMES

This word has several meanings. It can be used to refer to a book, to identify a particular book in a collection, to talk about the amount of space an object occupies, to describe a container in terms of its capacity, a quantity or amount, and even to describe the quantity of sound. This line of inquiry explores volumes referring to books, volumes referring to the amount of psychic pain and or periods of turmoil stored in our human mind. These paintings talk about our ability to store and catalogue what has happened to us, our ability to both retrieve and forget.

Sometimes volumes of anguish exceed our capacity to process our own experiences, and we then become readily available to feel the intensity of any injury, no matter how small the provocation.  Other times we can thrive and integrate even the most horrid moments of our lives and the most unbearable pain. Sometimes the library of our minds seems complex beyond comprehension and other times it seems simple and poetic.  

ARTIST STATEMENT

I usually find myself wrestling with issues like time and memory. The never ending curiosity to understand how our perception of the world comes together inside our brains hunts me. How does the mind come together? Sometimes it seems as if the mind is a dress with many pockets. Memories seem true and vivid or inaccurate and unreal.

How does one differentiate between what is real or not? During this process, I retreat into a world of materials where I get lost in curiosity and exploration…always looking for the answer that sometimes comes and other times, it evades me. I try to make things simple by organizing and clustering themes into lines of inquiry. These lines of inquiry are sometimes open, closed or bifurcating into new lines of inquiry. This is done in an effort to make sense of what I am doing, but sometimes this process complicates things further.

ARTIST BIO

I have been making art since I was a teenager. I graduated from the University of Washington, Seattle with a BFA in drawing and painting and Antioch University with an MA in Counseling and Art Therapy. I am part painter, part psychotherapist. In my artistic/mental exploration I use what I call “lines of inquiry” about things or subjects that interest me, I get lost in these inquiries. This is where I am from and where I belong. What I create is part art, part meditation and a mind experience of some kind.

EXHBITIONS

2018 “The Water between Us” Miami Art Week- Design Art Concepts – Miami, FL
2018 “The Holiday Show” – Gallery 110 – Seattle, WA

2012 – BFA Thesis Exhibition, Painting, Jacob Lawrence Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

2012 –  BFA Open House Exhibition, Painting and Drawing, Sandpoint Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

2011 – “Present”, Juried Show, Jacob Lawrence Gallery Jacob Lawrence Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA

2010 – “Domestic”, Juried Show, Jacob Lawrence gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA