Anne Meredith Terpstra

The Title of this Series comes from a poem by Pablo Neruda, a poem which, for me, in its messy earthly perceptions, reveals some of the feelings I get from seeing these paintings together. I am drawn to the somber and introspective tone, and how it mines the complexities of love and communication, exploring themes of loss, longing, and the force of words in a most sensual way, linking each experience to the natural world.

The poem is self reflective, and aware of itself within the context of the early 20th century, with its focus on modernism and the exploration of subjective experience. The repetitive structure and the web of nature symbolism in many of Neruda's poems resonate with my own process. The combination of the sensory and the natural, the objective and the eternal... this, coupled with a fiercely instinctual way of working are all ideas I strongly relate to and aim to realize in painting.

So That You Will Hear Me - Pablo Neruda

So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.
Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.
You listen to other voices in my painful voice.

Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.

The Morning is Full - Pablo Neruda

The morning is full of storm
in the heart of summer.

The clouds travel like whit handkerchiefs of goodbye,
the wind, traveling, waving them in its hands.

The numberless heart of the wind
beating above our loving silence.

Orchestral and divine, resounding among the trees
like a language full of wars and songs.

Wind that bears off the dead leaves with a quick raid
and deflects the pulsing arrows of the birds.

Wind that topples her in a wave without spray
and substance without weight, and leaning fires.

Her mass of kisses breaks and sinks,
assailed in the door of the summer's wind.

These paintings employ Prussian blue color alone in monochrome or by mixing with white. This particular color I see as holding resonance with the ocean and I have always delighted in arriving back with it. The color’s link to the subconscious is uncanny. On Blue, Goethe wrote: “ We love to contemplate blue, not because it advances us, but because it draws us after it.”

With each of the paintings, I come to the canvas with out any pre-visualization, with only the Prussian blue, and seeking to unearth some new rhythm in texture. Reflecting on the color blue and its abyssal and intrinsically vast mysterious self is a way for me to slow down time, and reflect on waves within time and memory.

The cyanotypes combine a spontaneous, and highly process oriented style of printmaking with one of the oldest alternative photographic processes.  The work seeks to break down common methods the viewer uses to categorize images and is influenced by decisions that are unconscious, intuitive, and associative in approach. The results are fragmentary combinations that exert a kind of psychological pressure. 

The use of double exposure and divergent imagery speaks to the transient and subjective nature of both time and memory. The blueprints obscure the image and the boundaries of artistic medium, and in so doing ask the viewer to suspend the need to label and compartmentalize the image and the process of creating.

Working in black and white I like to employ themes of night and motion. I am seeking to obscure the image so to create a feeling of being immersed in a field of fierce movement where one feels so emersed in a scene, a feeling, and yet removed from seeing it clearly due the fleeting movement and darkness of it.

My background in printmaking inspires a somewhat subtractive approach to painting, where one begins with a layer of paint and uses methods to subtract from the surface. I often apply and remove paint with a squeegee and or palette knife and start with more paint than a tool or a brush can comfortably hold, thereby creating a challenge which demands a physical response to the materials themselves. These are images that arrive quickly with little pre-visualization in a state deeply in touch with and dependent on movement, and which move invariably toward the inseparable link between absence and presence.

Themes of depth and transience found in nature are always close at hand when I paint in any color, but these particular black and white scenes for me evoke the feeling of being surrounded by cypress trees at night traveling on a narrow highway or ravens near a stream of running water on a near moonless night. My hope is that the paintings suggest different ideas for each viewer. In the end, my intent is to evoke a sense of movement in the dark, and to create images that have been intentionally obscured, as if the imagined scenes are being dissolved or have just emerged to the surface.

In this series, I look to nature for inspiration. I am thinking of the feeling evoked when light filters through trees in a forest or a colorful garden, and the connectedness, freedom and abandon one feels when immersed in the natural world.

I pay great attention to creating a sense of depth. Whether I achieve this through the tools used to subtract paint from the surface, the undulating light and dark waves of color or the layering dry brush work under and over the sinuous botanical carvings, themes of depth and transience found in nature are always close at hand. These attributes lend a photographic quality to the paintings, one that evokes movement and a clarity that has been intentionally obscured, as if the images are being dissolved or have just emerged to the surface.

"Paint" is a series of digital photographs which capture architectural reflections in the windows and paint of cars. The photographs were all taken in Berlin with a cannon G10 in July of 2012. While the photographs embody the straight photographic approach, with no manipulation, the end result takes on a surreal quality. All photographs are printed on an Epson 4000 ink jet printer.

In painting, process is the intrinsic idea driving my work, and each mark and preceding layer or removal of a layer influences the following move. My background in printmaking inspires a somewhat subtractive approach to painting, where one begins with a layer of paint and uses methods to subtract it from the surface. I often apply and remove paint with a squeegee and or palette knife and sometimes start with more paint than a tool or a brush can comfortably hold, thereby creating a challenge which demands a physical response to the materials themselves.

2005 - 2007

In printmaking, the process is the intrinsic idea driving my work; the prints evolve organically and I’m inspired by the direction each layer presents in determining my next move. Many of the mixed media prints push the boundaries of the monotype medium through exploring processes such as chine collé, collage, embossing of plants/ flowers and lace, use of a squeegee and most recently incorporating cyanotype blue prints. Employing stencils, transfers, and direct handwork, I feel I have achieved a visual experiment that brings the viewer closer to the intuitive moment, an unfiltered creative act.

I am interested in how fast we traverse time and space through current modes of transportation and what this offers us, but also what control it takes away from our ability to interpret surrounding environments. At the rate we are moving within current forms of transportation, we now have less sovereignty and cannot perceive internally how fast we are moving. In a sense we have lost a major mode of perception when traveling. This changes not only our perception of what we see through our window, but also our perception of the self. Through freezing moments of rapid movement, I illustrate a loss of control in the physical realm that draws one’s attention into an inner reality.

The images in this body of work are all digital color inkjet prints. All of the photographs were taken in major cities around the world, including, but not limited to Shanghai, New York City, Paris, Berlin, and the San Francisco Bay Area. In Shanghai, in the spring of 2009, I began to use digital photography to capture my subjects in motion by way of shooting from moving cars or by shooting moving objects themselves while keeping the camera still. I found this process of creating images extremely liberating in its taking on a quality of indirectness. At the speed some of the images are taken it goes without saying that I do not know exactly how a print will come out. This artistic distance mirrors both the mode and subject of the images created.

Capturing cities in this way indirectly illustrates progress. This is currently a big issue in Shanghai, as traditional ways of living and “old towns” in Shanghai are rapidly being demolished and new skyscrapers erected in their place. The shots capture an abstract spontaneity in their use of color and the blurred effects of a moving camera. Exposing modern life in a state of flux, the images reveal a passage of time and distance traversed, allowing one to enter into a state where space and light bend, opening doors to the unconscious.

These digital photographs were taken from inside trains in Germany and the Netherlands. All photographs were taken in the summer of 2012 using a canon G10. All photographs are printed on an Epson 4000 ink jet printer.