Anaïs (artist alias),American born, French by marriage, has had many a career, but the one that consistently draws her,  the one that can’t be done without, is Art, often combined with writing in Ekphrasis, both English and French. 

She prefers writing poetry or short stories, and after having three children in Paris, she often told or wrote tales for them, later illustrated.  The acrylic wall paintings she sometimes paints today in toddler rooms are light and bright, the scenes usually taken from one of these early stories...

In the early 60s, as a student in an American college, art was her minor. When she transferred to the University of Paris to complete a teaching Masters’ in Anglo-American Studies, with a thesis in black power, Art became a true passion and she simultaneously took Art History courses at the Louvre and went to night classes with a number of Rome prize winning artists in drawing, sculpture and painting twice a week for several years.  She continued to write diligently and with great discipline for 2 hours a day throughout her time in France, from 1965 to 1978.

Her first exhibitions took place in Parisian fairs and salons. She could not, at that time, practice art full time, since she began teaching at the University of Paris at Censier in the Continuing Education department, designing and teaching programs for specialized English domains in enterprises.  Her 3 beautiful children and family life also took center stage in her heart and time.

She returned to the US from 1978-90, where she worked full time to support her family, but continued writing and creating art works, with the beginnings of conscious Ekphrasis projects, (Ekphrasis is, in this case, the combination of two art forms, poetry and visual arts), and exploring new art forms, branching out to large 3-D macramé sculptures and collages. 

It was during this prolonged period, when raising her children in the United States that she became a Massachusetts real estate broker, worked in Guidance at the Junior High School,  taught at the University of Massachusetts, founded an advertising and marketing firm, as well as 3 galleries,  one of which went on the road to bring long week-end art happenings to empty buildings in mid-sized towns.

She still writes in both English and French. Her poetry, often illustrated with her own art works, has been published in small press and numerous collections. She specializes in Haiku (17 syllable poems) in English.

Today, her art work is primarily India ink based, with the addition of mixed media in acrylics, textile paints and collage, as well as calligraphic renditions of her poetry.  She has also done a bit of enamelled clay sculpture, which she hopes to continue after publishing the two poetry books she recently finished.

Not much for repetition, the only other series she has done were on flowers to express psychological challenges, dragons of all sorts done for the Bar King, memories of her Brazil trip in 2010, one of the first exhibitions in the new gallery in the Mairie de la Commune libre du Neubourg, and an early exhibition in the Bevaix gallery called « Woman who are you? »... The present exhibition is typical of her use of art in inter-aid circumstances, and for which she has specifically created a large number of works on the theme of the earthquake and the ensuing tsunami. 

She is now working on a series of strange little creature people that are more primitive tribal art than her usual works and which seem to want to be born, all by themselves!

Œuvres