Clouds over Socorro, New Mexico Painting

Zannah Noe is a contemporary mixed-media artist. She takes her cues from architecture, abstraction and atmosphere to depict the anatomy of place. She migrates images through multiple processes, starting with photography and utilizing image transfers, stencils or a silkscreen. She employs representation and abstract expressionism while fusing photography and mark-making elements with more traditional techniques in her oil and acrylic works. Her work has gorgeous, lush colors that make a vibrant abstract foundation that often comes through translucent image transfers. Her artwork focuses on larger social injustices of housing, urban planning and cultural identities. Inspiration is often pulled from her digital archive of many road trips across America, along with her influences from graphic design and photography. The work explores the American vernacular and its iconography. Ms. Noe formally studied photography under the well-known photographer Carrie Mae Weems at Hampshire College. She then took courses in multimedia design at San Francisco City College. She later studied privately with master painter Doug Schneider in San Francisco. She uses her design, photography and politics in her artwork to find the beauty and purpose that leverages this creative process to become the framework of her artwork. With its multilayered metaphors, vibrant colors and bold abstractions, Noe’s works are a daring, chaotic reflection of the complexity of the identity of place.