JOSHUA TREE, CALIFORNIA
About the Artist
Anne-Louise Ewen
BIOGRAPHY
Born 1976, New Orleans
Lives and works in Joshua Tree, California
Anne-Louise Ewen is a California-based artist known for her vivacious gestural works that emphasize brush work, color, and above all, freedom. Her work includes paintings, monotypes, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, and books.
Raised in rural South Louisiana along the Mississippi River between antebellum homes and oil refineries, she was mentored one summer in early childhood by a traveling art teacher who taught her the fundamentals of drawing with charcoal and encouraged her to practice daily, a formative experience which established art-making as an essential element of her life.
She studied fine art at the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts (a magnet boarding school) before spending two years in Paris, France learning figure drawing and printmaking. Once back home, she attended college and founded The Donaldsonville Art Colony, a collective of painters, writers, musicians, and filmmakers.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina (2005), she moved from New Orleans to Los Angeles, opened an art gallery, and fulfilled a lifelong desire to connect with her mother's California ancestry, an artistic family which included Beat Poet Brother Antoninus.
In 2020 she left Los Angeles for Joshua Tree, California, a small artistic community in the Mojave Desert where she spends her time painting and taking long drives through the national park.
What influence most significantly shapes your creative process and inspires your artwork?
Excerpt from interview
with Anne-Louise Ewen
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
One of the things artists are here to say is, “You are here for more than mere survival. There is beauty. This, too, happens on this planet.” At heart, it’s this desire to bring forth tangible beauty, goodness, and pleasure into the world — here and now — that moves me to make paintings. I chose the artist’s life early on because the arts show us that a life of poetry and wonder is possible.
I have a deep hunger for the creative process, which is so life affirming in itself. I’m invigorated by beautiful brush strokes. I’m in love with the materials and tools that I use — like thick textured canvas, big tubes of oil paint, paintbrushes I’ve had for 20-plus years.
Regarding subject matter, I never know what’s going to catch my fancy. I’m interested in creating my own meaningful mythological imagery and translating objects into my personal language of brush strokes and color. I find it very satisfying to depict women in ways that capture our dignity and depth. These days I’m excited about: animals (I seem to be going through a horse phase), flowers, textiles, antique etchings, old french posters, and typography in general.
I make paintings that help me feel more at home in the world.
If I could choose a superpower, I would wave my hand and give everyone that kind of home, a safe place that beautifully reflects and amplifies the best of who they are and hope to become; where they can unguardedly be themselves, lay down to sleep in peace, and wake up feeling in love with the world.
For me, art is a beacon of goodness in this brief life in which we'll all inevitably encounter bouts of pain from time to time.
The cheerfulness of my art isn't a denial of this fact of life -- but an acknowledgement of it.
The arts are a very real comfort to me in the face of this truth, and for whatever light my art can bring into other lives I am grateful.