Anne Q. McKeown - Reflection and Ardor
“I am a naturalist, materials and what they can do fascinate me, I greet that search with images to enliven the materials with narrative of story, image, color (perception)”
In Anne Q McKeown’s work she combines rational/irrational and conceptual processes with intuitive inquiry. With concept in hand she calls on chance, accident and random samplings to form the basis of her work. In addition, she develops various figures, outlines and shapes to tell her story. Some of these are symbolic and some are taken from the canon of art history.
McKeown may start with stencils made from wire grids, which she uses for mark making. Marks and shapes are not meant to be part of a strict order; there is tension; incompleteness; a search for what can be made possible. Marks and shapes tumble, block, and compete for space, mirroring a world where systems and beliefs shred and reform into inchoate, dynamic relationships. The work asks the viewer to create coherence. There are bits of the familiar, but these are simply hints and allusions recorded in the process of making.