"Far Reaching" Painting

Anne Cleary creates rich nature-based paintings with oil, spray paint, gold and silver leaf that possess a fairytale-like quality derived from her childhood in the Midwestern countryside. She fluctuates between referential known realities and abstract musings on our spiritual connection to the natural world. She lives and works in Indianapolis and the northern Indiana lakes region, showing frequently in Indianapolis and Chicago, and the east coast. Artist Statement Imagination and intuition are my guides as I create layered worlds of stacked landscapes consisting of flowers, lakes, oceans, rivers and woods using oils, spray paint and gold and silver leaf. My work is an emotional reaction to the natural world and my place within a complex system. Time spent in the outdoors is both grounding and energizing. Nature is the starting point of personal reflection and spiritual connection, and I feel that my paintings are channeling something that I confess I do not completely understand but I find very exciting. Stacked landscapes connect the here to the elsewhere and are the result of noticing and observing. They are about connection and mystery, something bigger than me. I think I am always recording some essence of the world around me subconsciously. I capture these imaginative places when they are revealed to me through painting. Creating has always been a calming and saving force in my life, as everything I experience in life inevitably finds its way into my work in some way. Joys are celebrated, darkness and tribulations examined and endured, and hope, however small, reigns. My work has a fairy tale quality to it that I think must be derived from my childhood in the beautiful midwest countryside. was given tremendous freedom to explore the woods, creek and hayfields of my childhood homestead and it was there that my wild imagination could take off in any which way it chose. I carry that same spirit within my paintings- I feel a kinship to my child-self when I am painting. As a child was taught that while nature can be beautiful and glorious, it is also violent and dangerous and we must always remember that ultimately it is a force beyond our power and must be respected. In this way, nature becomes a refection of our humanness, of our interior worlds built of dreams and emotions, of darkness and light.