Wally Workman Gallery | 2/6-2/27 | Austin, TX

Into the Soul

New portraits by Anne Siems are on view at Wally Workman Gallery in Austin, Texas this February

The woman in Anne Siem’s painting Be the Soul wears a blouse embroidered with a saying from the Persian poet Rumi.

Wherever you stand,
Be the soul of that place.

“Rumi was a mystic who had a connection with the divine. The quote encourages the idea of really being of service to others wherever you land—to give the best of yourself. Let your soul shine free and clear of any baggage, anything that dims your life.”Know Thyself, acrylic, 40 x 40"

Siems had been painting “portraits” that were a reflection of herself—“my experience shared through these different faces or personas that I bring out like actors.”

Recently she has been painting women of color to portray their stories, to show their strength as well as their vulnerability. “I have been influenced by what
I have seen of women of color teaching us white women about social justice,” she says. She has received criticism for being a white woman painting Black women but responds, “All I wish to do is have these women see themselves in a beautiful, sensitive, heroic, authentic way. The paintings are not overtly political. They portray the deep soul of that persona.”

Other portraits are of white women tattooed with phrases meaningful to them and to others. Siems refers to their having shaved their heads as a “beautifully radical” statement that relates to women in history having been shaved in shame and to contemporary women shaving as an act of independence.Be the Soul, acrylic 40 x 30"

Working with tattoos, she began referring to and bringing it into her portraits in a decorative way. The blouse of the woman in Be The Soul is transparent, revealing, mysteriously, the background rather than her body. Siem’s backgrounds are abstract, organic landscapes reminiscent of the paintings of the ’60s and ’70s that she so admires. “I’m struggling with the backgrounds,” she admits. “This background has an element of Swedish design and Marimekko, but not as graphic. I like the background of clouds in Know Thyself. I’m working toward a new level of the background and the foreground being more congruent. I have to have fun and I have to challenge myself.”Tender, watercolor, 12 x 12"

She refers to Rilke’s poem, Go to the Limits of Your Longing, advice from the Creator sending a new person out into the world. He says:
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

The beauty and the terror of the past year have been the inspiration for her new paintings, which will be shown at Wally Workman Gallery in Austin, Texas, February 6 through 27. —

Wally Workman Gallery 1202 W. Sixth Street • Austin, TX 78703 • (512) 472-7428 • www.wallyworkmangallery.com