Originally from Tucson, Arizona Annie Helmericks Louder now lives and works in Missouri. She holds a BFA in painting from the University of Arizona and an MFA in painting and fiber from the University of Missouri.
"As an artist, I establish understanding by visually tracing and recording where I have been. Love of land forms my inner landscape; it is my geography of hope.
I am an autobiographical storyteller; my art visually records where I have been and guides me to where I want to go.
My "stories" focus on the singular poignancy of life's everyday personal experiences. My mother, nature writer and explorer Constance Helmericks, showed me that looking into landscapes-mountains and canyons, rivers and streams-could be my way of life. Working extensively on location continues to be an essential practice; it fills me up.
I have always been a maker of things-finding with my hands the spirit of home and my place in the world. I make art daily- like a musician practicing notes- often making just little things. Technically, I am inspired by a variety of media and materials-poetry, painting, drawing, cloth, weaving and knitting. I slip between methods and choose and combine techniques that best clarify and communicate what it is I want to say. In my studio I circle around ideas and materials-scratching and sorting and moving images and ideas until a work feels finished.
Different from my earlier landscape based works I have recently embarked on several figurative series. My earlier deliberate exclusion of human forms was meant as an artistic statement: "it isn't all about us." But in spite of myself, people have crept in-sometimes with just a shadow or a hand or a foot. But now no denying-here they are. Although my personal narratives seem very straightforward to me, I do not think it is relevant to detail specific tales. As my "stories" focus on the poignancy of life's everyday experiences, it is my hope that they can exist as structures that contain room enough to inject other personal readings."
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