CURRICULUM VITAE - Downloadable PDF
https://www.instagram.com/annwolfpainter
518.316.1220
Born 1967, Poughkeepsie, New York
Lives and works in Rensselaerville, New York
Education
M.F.A. 2006 Studio Arts University at Albany Albany, New York
B.F.A. 1991 Surface Pattern Design Syracuse University Syracuse, New York
Solo Exhibitions
2013 American Sublime, Carey Institute for Global Good, Rensselaerville, New York
1999 Fresh Oil, Cunneen Hackett Cultural Arts Center, Poughkeepsie, New York
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023 Upstate Art Weekend, Bull Farm, Rock Tavern, New York
Art on Paper, Pier 36, New York, New York
2022 It’s A Wrap, Bernay Fine Art, Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Shimmer, Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, Massachusetts
2021 Magic Garden, LabSpace, Hillsdale, New York
2019 Puro Arte, Martinez Gallery, Troy, New York
Picture This, APL/Opalka Gallery, Albany, New York
Surveys the Prairie of Your Room, costumes for Witness Relocation performance, The Invisible Dog Art Center, Brooklyn, New York
HOLIDAY, LabSpace, Hillsdale, New York
2018 Be Still Life, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, Massachusetts
True North, LabSpace, Hillsdale, New York
Parallel Realities, Collar Works, Troy, New York
2016 Exquisite, LabSpace, Hillsdale, New York
Casheesh, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, Massachusetts
2011 After School Special, University at Albany, Albany, New York (curated by Ken Johnson) (catalogue)
Two-Person Exhibition, From the Center of Our World, Hudson Valley Community College, Troy, New York
Vignette, The Art Center of the Capital Region, Troy, New York
2010 Benefit for The Front, Nurture Art Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
2009 Two-Person Exhibition, New Work: Alberto Caputo/Ann Wolf, Way Out Gallery, Rensselaerville, New York
2008 It’s Gouache and Gouache Only, Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, New York
2007 A Happening, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, Massachusetts
2006 M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition, University at Albany, Albany, New York
2005 Best of SUNY Exhibition, New York State Museum, Albany, New York
Professional Experience
2019 Witness Relocation production of Surveys the Prairie of Your Room, La Mama, New York, New York (designed costumes)
2008-09 Youth Services Assistant - Grinnell Library Association, Wappinger Falls, New York (planned and oversaw teen services and events)
2000-05 Curator of Visual Resources, University at Albany, Albany, New York (oversaw 90,000 slides, managed work study students, and assisted patrons)
1998-00 Visual Resources Technician, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York (assisted art historians with audiovisual requirements during class time)
1992-93 Swimwear pattern designer, Henry Glass & Co., New York, New York (created textile patterns for bathing suits)
Teaching Experience
2007-13 Adjunct Professor, University at Albany, Albany, New York (Beginning and Intermediate Painting, Drawing)
2008-11 Adjunct Professor, Hudson Valley Community College, Troy, New York (Two Dimensional Design)
2006-07 Adjunct Professor, Sage Colleges, Albany, New York (Two Dimensional Design, Color Theory)
2005-06 Instructor of Record, University at Albany, Albany, New York (Two Dimensional Design)
2000-05 Curator of Visual Resources, University at Albany, Albany, New York (oversaw 90,000 slides, managed work study students, and assisted patrons)
Residencies and Awards
2019 Vermont Studio Center Residency, Johnson, Vermont
2019 Design finalist, The Living Desert Museum, Palm Desert, California
2006 Milton Avery Internship – Curatorial Assistant, University Art Museum, University at Albany, Albany, New York
1999 Dutchess County Arts Council Studio Residency, Poughkeepsie, New York
Selected Press
“It’s A Wrap Holiday Show Opens at Bernay Fine Art,” The Berkshire Eagle, Dec. 8, 2022
Smullen, Sharon, “These Works of Art Shimmer,” The Berkshire Eagle, March 24, 2022
Janairo, Michael, “Vignette Gives Intriguing Scenes at the Arts Center,” Albany Times Union, January 18, 2011.
http://www.timesunion.com/default/article/Vignette-gives-intriguing-scenes-at-the-Arts-978633.php#xzz1CFZlkXrg
Kane, Tim, “So Much To See,” Albany Times Union, October 6, 2011.
http://albarchive.merlionone.net/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&oneimageid=160695577
littlethings.com - “Shine” series featured artist, 2017
WMHT - “Mentoring in the Capital District” - interview, 2018
Selected Publications
After School Special - 2011 Alumni Show
Professional Memberships
2022 Rensselaerville Historical Society
2006 College Art Association – member 2001-05
2000 Visual Resources Association – Secretary 2002-03
Selected Collections
Virginia Carter, Rensselaerville, New York
A.G. Rosen, New York, New York
JoAnn Secor, Sag Harbor, New York
Geoffrey Young, Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Lynn Love, Rensselaerville, New York
Hugh Freund, New York, New York
Sutton Hays, New York, New York
Ellen Rooney, London, England
RTIST STATEMENT
As a painter who grew up and lived for many years in the Hudson Valley, my influences are specific to the Valley’s landscape and lore. In my childhood on a farm near Poughkeepsie the old railroad bed running through the fields was transformed into an imaginary medieval road where I would sell scallions, violets and precious stones to an imagined cast of characters. The old apple trees nearby, overgrown, formed a roof that became the thatched houses of the invisible gnomes, all no doubt inspired by a favorite tome,The Golden Book of Gnomes and Fairies. Equally exciting to the child brain, were the stories of trappers such as Roeliff Jansen, ranging far and wide along the Upper Hudson, living with a local Wappinger tribe in their encampment while exploring and collecting furs. A century after Jansen, James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales thrilled with the stories of Natty Bumppo, a frontiersman involved in hair raising adventures under the canopy of old growth forest extending from the region of the Delaware Indians northward to Canada.
In my early twenties, while I worked as a docent at Mills Mansion Historic Site, I discovered that the journals of the first Europeans encountering the New World portray the Hudson Valley as a vast wilderness, an Eden populated and stewarded by the indigenous people. The history captured my imagination to the extent that I see the Valley as it is and sometimes, more intensely, as it was.
Ten years ago I widened my imaginary world to include the Helderberg Plateau, slightly west of the Hudson River, where I now live. With a view of the Catskill Mountains, “the faery region of the Hudson,” according to 19th Century writer Washington Irving, I occupy an environment of high meadows and deep, wooded ravines sheltering many animals including deer, bear, porcupine, and an occasional mountain lion. Aerial views show a great territory of farms and state land stretching north for many miles. Here, one experiences an expansion of the mind, wandering for long hours through this wilderness without much human intervention. Closer to the ground, in the forest nearby there is a tall white pine that houses several porcupines and mysterious large nests have appeared high in the hemlocks in another part of the woods. Heavy rains bring surges of brightly colored mushrooms in every shape creating a magical sense of a secretive and unknown space.
Visually, I am inspired by the Netherlandish landscape and genre painters’s depictions of Dutch life in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially since it coincided with Dutch settlement on the Hudson River. I have used Northern Renaissance imagery in many of my paintings, appropriating parts of Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s, The Harvest, as well as sections of the triptychs and altarpieces of Rogier van der Weyden and Matthias Grunewald.
I observe the woods during my daily walks and collect locations and impressions that serve as the starting point for my paintings. Then, I collaborate with a photographer to document subject matter from the wilderness, sometimes lighting the object or scene, and playing with different lenses and filters. This allows me to compose the painting ahead of time, and have a permanent image of the moment and feeling from which to work. The weather and light are ephemeral, so the photograph becomes the world in which I live while making the painting.
Having constructed an imaginary prelapsarian Hudson Valley in my head, the realities of industry and suburbanization’s toll are buffered for me. In part, maybe that is what my paintings are - a search for the Garden, intact, only 300 years before in the place I was born.