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Anna Wehrwein is an artist living and working in Knoxville, TN. She is originally from the Boston area and received her BS in Art and BA in English/Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is currently an MFA candidate in Painting and Drawing at the University of Tennessee.

My work explores the intersection of perspectival, color, and social space. Using drawing as a starting point, I’ve made paintings and video that construct the act of looking as having the potential to be both subjective and communal.

Contained within the picture plane, this gaze is intimate instead of performative: a tool for self-reflexivity and self-imaging. In turn, the high-chroma of the work— rich magentas, deep blues, acidic greens—radiate out.

The optics and vibrancies are both enticing and shifting, demanding attention but refusing a singular read. In this way the color— opaque and vibrant like color-aid paper—acts as both ground and figure. 

But the heart of the work is in the relationships and community it depicts: women artists, friends, who use the domestic space as a site of creativity. It’s an idealistic space, but also a very real one. One in which beers are had, ideas are shared, tattoos and haircuts are given, and paintings are made.

– Anna Wehrwein, 2016

* select images courtesy of the artist