CURRICULUM VITAE - Downloadable PDF

annelizabethwolf@gmail.com

aewolf.com

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.