Anna Kaye, Reverence

An Introduction by Mary Kathryn Jablonski

I met Anna Kaye years ago when she was a recent Skidmore College alumna, painting magnificent imagined red landscapes — of Mars. She has since settled in Colorado and is drawing large scale realistic landscapes and working on other heartfelt projects involving our own precious Earth.

An Artist Statement (Excerpt)

Our global climate is changing and with it, wildfires have increased in size and intensity, making it harder for our ecosystems to recover. 

Absorbing these impacted habitats over the years has embedded these creative muses, conflict and survival, into my work. I grew up near Detroit, Michigan where vast urban decay was rampant from de-industrialization, crime, and other factors. This enhanced my sense of empathy, compassion, love for diversity and justice, and reverence for the natural world. Residing in Colorado for over a decade and observing its fire cycle directly provides an abundance of impassioned visual stimulus for my creative practice. 

With brittle, powdery tools and fragile paper surfaces, I draw scenes in which calamity has occurred, such as scorched forests, and scenes when hope arises as plants and animals re-inhabit the forest. With my drawings, I remember the forgotten and reveal the hidden. Perceiving life with heightened senses and empathy compels me to capture its inherent features, “imperfections” and all. Every angle, tiny detail, value, or hue is an important part of the whole.

A Gallery