Ann Baldwin (continued)
Ann Baldwin was born and raised in London, England.
She studied French at the University of Sussex, and English Literature at
the University of London. Writing poetry and radio plays in her spare time,
she taught literature and drama in London schools until 1990.
She began painting seriously in 1991, just after moving to the San Francisco
Bay Area. Initially a traditional watercolorist, she began experimenting
with many different media and gradually made the move towards collage and
mixed media painting.
In 1996 she formed the connection between her love of literature and her
work as a visual artist, focusing on Shakespeare - the man, his characters,
and the text of his plays. She had always found London theaters fascinating
places, with their ornate architecture, heavily decorated wallpapers, and
rich brocade and velvet furnishings. Her collages were a sensual and emotional
response to the theatre, layering images from old programs, incorporating
excerpts from scripts, pasting on phrases which instantly bring to mind
the experience of play-going. In some she uses strips of theatrical fabric
and wallpaper. Paint is applied like stage make-up to mask and disguise.
The subjects of many of her theatrical pieces were Macbeth and King Lear.
In 1998 Ann Baldwin, who has family in France, turned to French Literature
as a source of further inspiration and the works of Marcel Proust in particular.
His fascination with memory and time is represented in some of her larger
works on canvas. Personally annotated pages from A La Recherche
du Temps Perdu together with images of Parisian chorus girls
and hand-drawn references to the famous 'madeleine' cake which sparked off
strange memories of his youth recurred often.
From 2000-2004 Ann Baldwin's paintings became more abstract, although still
including text from medieval documents and works of literature. In 2003 she
moved to Vallejo, CA where she has a large studio in her home. She and her
husband also purchased a small home on the south coast of England, where
she now spends up to 3 months of the year. There she pursues her passionate
interest in photography. Recently she has begun exhibiting her photographs
in the Bay Area and incorporating some of them in a new series of photo paintings
which include many recognizable landscape elements alongside abstract passages.
Ann Baldwin's mixed media paintings have been very well received, leading
to several solo shows in the Bay Area and beyond, in colleges and universities,
commercial galleries, as well as several in alternative spaces, such as corporations,
restaurants, a YWCA and a city hall. She has also exhibited in over 150 juried
group shows nationally. Her collectors in the US, Canada, and Europe include
university professors, writers, actors, poets, and many who enjoy her combination
of literature and art.
In May 2001 her work was featured in Somerset Studio Magazine and in 2003 in a book called Collage for the Soul published
by Rockport. Posters of 4 of her abstract paintings have been published by
Bentley House.
Ann Baldwin's work is frequently seen in Hollywood productions, where her
paintings are used regularly in TV and movie studios. In the Bay Area she
is associated with several local art organizations and she has acted as a
juror for many local exhibitions. She conducts workshops in abstract painting,
mixed media collage, and art critique at art centers across the USA and Canada.
She also writes on the business of art.
Ann Baldwin
Creative Catalyst Productions Inc.
