Hunt Gallery To Show Works by Painter Anne Hanger

From October 4 through 29, the exhibition Of Thee I Sing by Anne Hanger will be on view at Mary Baldwin’s Hunt Gallery, located in Lyda B. Hunt Dining Hall on the main campus in Staunton.

“Western Landscape” by Anne Hanger

Hanger writes the following statement about her work:

I became an artist because I like adventure and I have a passion for plant and landscape forms that stimulate my imagination. Creating paintings of these forms is a way of sharing my enthusiasm for them. Energy, ambiguity, tension, complexity, exuberance, and unexpected elegance tend to attract me most.

Digital improvisations are a regular part of my daily art practice. I begin with shapes, colors, and textures taken from original paintings and abstracted photographs of landscapes I’ve visited. I combine and manipulate these pieces on the computer. I work the same forms over and over again, surprised by where these transformations take me. I think about my relationship to these images and seek to express how landscape forms reveal a spiritual domain. Vast expanses can be conveyed within the bounds of a small picture. Sometimes a single change can make an extraordinary difference. Like tributaries, these explorations eventually merge to become a greater whole. I work in this way until I find an image that captures the cosmic vitality that makes the landscapes I have experienced meaningful to me.

Some of these digital compositions become studies for larger works in acrylic on canvas. Others are printed in a small format for a more intimate kind of sharing. These works are a record of where I have been: the landscapes I have traversed, the art I have viewed and created, the spiritual paths I have trod; my inner life. I sometimes refer to them as “interior landscapes.”

Born in 1951 in the District of Columbia, Hanger grew up in Fairfax and earned her bachelor and master of fine arts degrees at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in 1974 and 1977, respectively. She previously served as art professor at Auburn University in Alabama, the University of New Orleans, Mississippi State University in Starkville, and here at Mary Baldwin.  She now paints full time and resides with her husband, Bob Craycroft, in Staunton.

A reception will be held for the artist from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on October 4 in Hunt Gallery. The public is invited to attend.

Hunt Gallery is dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary work in all media by regionally and nationally recognized artists.  The gallery is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday during the academic year. Hunt Gallery’s schedule for the 2021–22 academic year can be found online.