about anne...

PLACE OF BIRTH Edinburgh, Scotland

QUALIFICATIONS
1995 Master of Arts (Fine Arts) by Research (La Trobe University)
1991 M.C.S.D. Member of the Chartered Society of Designers, London
1977 Bachelor of Art (Illustration and Printmaking), Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art (4 years)

PROFESSIONAL
2005- Visual Arts (Fine Arts and Graphic Design/Multimedia) Undergraduate Course Coordinator, Arts Academy, University of Ballarat.
1997 -2004 Senior Lecturer, Studio Coordinator, Drawing and Multi-Discipline Studios, University of Ballarat.
1990 – 1997 Lecturer, Coordinator, Drawing Studio Coordinator, University of Ballarat
1987 -1990 Part-Time Lecturer, Drawing, Painting and Printmaking, University of Ballarat.
1983 – 1987 Fine Art Studio & Gallery Partner, Scotland
1981 – 1983 Part-time Lecturer in Printmaking and Design, Continuing Education Workshops, Riverina Institute of Advanced Education
( Charles Sturt University), Wagga Wagga.
1978 – 1981 Lecturer in Design and Printmaking, Coordinator of Foundation Studies, Darling Downs CAE ,( University of Southern Queensland).
1977 – 1978 Designer, External Studies Department and Media Services,
Darling Downs CAE ,( University of Southern Queensland).

EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2007 Paintings and works on paper, Salt Contemporary Art, Queenscliff
2007 Paintings and works on paper, Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh, June
2006 New Paintings, Salt contemporary Art, Queenscliff, 29 October- 17 Nov
2006 New Paintings, Harrison Galleries, Sydney 25 October – 11 November
2005 New Paintings, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne 4–20 October
2003 New Paintings, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne 20 May 7 June
2002 Auckland Connections, Depot Gallery, Sydney
2002 Auckland Connections, Gallery 2021, Auckland NZ
2001 Recent Paintings,Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne19May–8 June
1999 Works on Paper ,Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne 12-29 May
1997 Works on Paper, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne 3–21 June
Works on Paper, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery,Ballarat 25June–27 July
1995 Works on Paper, Moorabbin Arts Centre, Melbourne 6 – 29 Feb
1994 Masters by Research Examination Exhibition, ‘Still Lives’
Phyllis Palmer Gallery, La Trobe University, Bendigo June 1994
1993 Recent Works,Foyer Gallery,University of Ballarat, Ballarat
1988 Paperworks ,The Old Brewery ,Wagga 7–30 October
1987 Paperworks ,The Upstairs Gallery, Albury 6 December-7 February
1982 Paperworks ,The Old Brewery, Wagga 22August-5 September
1981 Works on Paper, Editions Galleries, Melbourne
1980 Prints , Contemporary Art Society Gallery, Adelaide 23-7 August
1980 Prints, The Printmakers Gallery & Workshop,Brisbane 24Oct-7Nov
1979 Prints from Australia, Compass Gallery, Glasgow 3 – 24 February
1978 Prints, Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney 12 -23 December

Group Exhibitions

2007 3 Harbours Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland
2007 Gallery Artists, Salt Contemporary Art, Queenscliff, Victoria
2006 Art Melbourne, Exhibition Building, 2 – 6 August
2006 Art Singapore, Suntec City, 28 September – 2 October
2006 Salt Contemporary Art, Queenscliff
2005 Art Sydney 05, Bowen Hill Studios
2005 Gallery Savah, Paddington, NSW
2005 Group Exhibition, ,Salt Contemporary Art, Queenscliff
2005 Art Singapore
2005 Gallery Artists , Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
2004 Treasures 04, Gallery Artists, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
2004 Melbourne Art Fair, Flinders Lane Gallery
2004 Sydney Affordable Art Show, Gallery 2121
2004 How much is that Doggie, Guide Dogs Australia, Sydney
2004 Melbourne Affordable Art Show, Gallery 2021
2003 Treasures 03, Gallery Artists , Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
2003 Sydney Affordable Art Show, Gallery 2021
2002 Treasures 02, Gallery Artists , Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
2002 Melbourne Art Fair, Flinders Lane Gallery
2001 Australian Abstractions, Gallery 2021
2000 It takes all sorts- school of arts staff, Gallery A, University of Ballarat
2000 Treasures , Gallery Artists , Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
2000 Grand Opening Exhibition, Maesta Arthouse, Ballarat
2000 Works on Paper, Art Matrix Gallery, Brisbane
2000 Melbourne Art Fair, Flinders Lane Gallery
2000 Up to Front, Art in the Mall ,Alfred Walk, Ballarat
2000 Treasures, Gallery Artists, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
1999 Treasures , 10th Anniversay , Gallery Artists, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
1999 Group Exhibition, IBM Data Centre
1998 Sixth Australian Contemporary Art Fair, Flinders Lane Gallery
1997 Amalgamate, Visual Arts staff University of Ballarat
1996 Staff Arts 96, Foyer Gallery, University of Ballarat
1996 Paperworks, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Horsham Regional Art Gallery
1995 Art Now, staff of the School of Arts, University of Ballarat
1994 Works on Paper, Robin Gibson Gallery, Darlinghurst, NSW
1994 British International Miniature Print Exhibition, Off Centre Gallery, Bristol
1993 Small Works, Wide Vision, Downlands Art Prize Exhibition, Queensland
1993 Diamond Valley Art Award Acquisitive Exhibition and Sale, Victoria
1992 Small Works, Wide Vision, Downlands Art Prize Exhibition, Queensland
1989 18 Visual Artists, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery
1988 Group Exhibition, The Old Brewery Gallery, Wagga, NSW
1984 Scottish Arts Council Exhibition, Compass Gallery, Glasgow
1983 Scottish Arts Council Exhibition, Compass Gallery, Glasgow
1982 Group Show, Wagga Wagga City Art Gallery
1980 Gold Coast City Art Prize, Evandale
1980 Queensland Artists, Brisbane Art Gallery
1979 Gold Coast City Art Prize, Evandale
1979 Queensalnd Printmakers,The Printmakers Gallery & Workshop, Brisbane
1977 Scottish Travelling Print Open:
London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen
1976 Compass 8th Christmas Exhibition, Compass Gallery, Glasgow
1975 Impress, Scottish students and invited staff, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland

PUBLICATIONS
2006 Anne Saunders, New Paintings, Harrison Galleries and Salt Contemporary Art
2006 Sited, Register of Senior University Women.
2005 Anne Saunders, New Paintings, Flinders Lane Gallery.
2003 Anne Saunders, New Paintings, Flinders Lane Gallery.
2003 Sited, Who’s Who in Finance and Industry.
2002 Anne Saunders, Auckland Connections, Gallery 2021.
2001 Anne Saunders, Recent Paintings, Flinders Lane Gallery.
2001 Anne Sounders, Bill Ferguson and Doug Wright,
Australian Landscape Abstractions, Gallery 2021, Auckland.
1999 Anne Saunders Works on Paper, Flinders Lane Gallery.
1994 Anne Saudners Masters by Research Thesis, ‘Still Lives’.
1992 Sited, Who’s who of Australian Visual Artists.
1992 Sited, Australian Directory of Academics.
1991 Prospect, University of Ballarat.
1991 Sited, Directory of Women Artists.
1990 Sited, Small works Wide Visions.
1990 Sited, Australian Directory of Academics.
1989 Sited, Artists and Galleries of Australia.
1989 Sited, Artists Data Bank.
1988 Sited, Australian Artists Producing Prints.
1984 Sited, Artists and Galleries of Australia.
1982 Sited, Directory of Australian Printmakers, Edited by Lilian Wood, Publisher Print Council of Australia.
Design, Beyond Midnight, ABC Radio Around Australia.
1979 Design, A Century of Homemaking: A History of the Darling downs, by Maurice French, Publisher DDIP.
1979 Nice to Hang on the Wall, Teaching Video programme for students studying media and creative arts
1978 Design, Land of the Leslies: Buildings of Early Settlers on the Darling Downs, by Mark Brelsford, Publisher DDIP.
1977 Cover Design, Enterprise in a Mixed Economy, by Jack McGill, Publisher Blackie.
1977 Cover Design, Investing in Scotland, by Jack McGill, Publisher Blackie.

2006 Exhibition Catalogue essay by Dr Peter Hill

Much art of the 20th Century can be traced back to either Pablo Picasso or Marcel Duchamp. They apprear like twin rivers irrigating the visual plains over many decades, often bursting into unexpected tributaries.
But what if we focus on painting alone? Who else do we add to Picasso as visionary and exemplar? With the benefit of hindsight it is probably correct to single out Piet Mondrian and Jackson Pollock as the twin poles of abstraction to which many of us return. True, there was a resurgence of figuration in painting in the 1980s, but that tributary, with its twin streams of myth and narrative, lead directly back to Picasso.

Mondrian, with his grids and his isolation of colour, influenced architects and designers as much as he influenced other artists. His work was cool and calculated and appealed to a post-war Utopian ethic. Pollock, and his confreres – Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Lee Krasner, Willem de Kooning and others – appealed top the emotions, to the senses, to the now. Pollock painted the way Jack Kerouac wrote (and the way both men drove cars) – dangerously and instinctively. This wild, pre-apocalyptic energy was also balanced by a sort of Zen simplicity and love of nature – an immersion in the present.

For me, the paintings of Anne Saunders have always fed back to an Abstract Expressionist source – perhaps closer to the highs of Rothko than the down-on-the-floor lows of Pollock. But there is far more to her work than this obvious link. There are the influences of Scottish lyrical abstraction and several generations of hard looking combined with vigorous application of paint and thought. That comes from a previous life. In Australia, she has been soaked in intense sunlight which can make nightfall seem even darker by comparison. She has been seduced by the freedom of space that this great continent allows, and small canvases can contain big visual events.

Drawing and painting is a decision making and a mark making process. The former involves everything from basic things like choosing the size of one’s canvas to incredibly subtle ones relating to the tone and hue of a particular mix of paint which might take hours to resolve, or whether to build up skeins of paint through washes or to go straight in with a palette knife and a large squeeze of ultramarine. The latter – the mark making decisions – are of course related. They may involve decisions about the width of the brush head in relation to the type of mark made by the neighbouring passage of paint. And these are not inconsequential decisions. Just look at someone like Brice Marden who ended up throwing his brushes away altogether and painting with sticks and twigs in the most sublime way.

When you look at a broad cross section of Anne Saunders’ work – A Little Homage; Fading Memory; Writing on the Wall – you see that some marks are made to sing out and attract the attention of the spectator, whereas others marks mask a quite exquisite underpainting in which colour values are flipped and a green forms a halo around a field of red or a fringe of orange makes a rich blue even richer.

The final element in the work of Anne Saunders that I would like to touch on is a feeling of “the sense of place” mixed with “the sense of travel”. Like many of us Anne has lived both spiritually and mentally on both sides of the planet. Her work reflects both the Australian bush and the Scottish romantic tradition of moorland and loch. Sometimes, in her paintings, you feel that the red heart of Australia is married to memories of the cold blue skies of Scotland – a Saltire flag laid out upon the hot coals of an Aussie barbecue.

But it is more than this. The real travel is not from Heathrow to Tullamarine, it is the journey of a lifetime. It is a childhood in Scotland that grows into a learning experience at art school in Dundee and is then grafted on to a broadbrush Australian vision.
It is not surprising to learn that Anne Saunders’ work is highly valued in New Zealand, as it is in Scotland, and “the land of the long white cloud” has become something of a steppingstone between the two very different (yet sometimes alarmingly similar) cultures in which she has lived.
How should we approach these artworks? My quick response is “frequently”. Don’t just come on the opening night and be sidetracked by auld acquaintances re-acquainting themselves. Come on your own, when the gallery is quieter and you can better replicate the shrine-like ambience of the artists’ studio. Come on your own and let time stand still.