Painting and mixed media

you will find work in progress, completed work and work for sale.

At this stage of Anna’s life, her work comes together in the moments between teaching and parenting responsibilities. At any given time, her home studio contains stacks of plein air drawings, small collage studies grouped together, and an in-progress painting series on birch panels. Though she typically works small, she usually has at least one larger panel or paper roll going as well (as an outlet to work out larger scale ideas and perhaps an act of defiance toward her small space).

Seeing work in progress alongside some finished pieces will give visitors a sense of how important the natural landscape is to Anna’s practice, and acquaint you with the slow, fragmented process of her mixed media work.

In life and in art, I’m interested in the purposeful restructuring of what has been broken down. My work explores how we navigate cycles of rupture and repair as they relate to the surrounding landscape, using textures from nature as a nourishing foundation.

I currently work in mixed media, in spurts of time. This is an attempt to acknowledge and elevate the irregular studio rhythms of an artist who is also a teacher and a mom to young children—a necessary exercise that has resulted in something special. I lay down textured underpaintings in acrylic, then play for weeks (or months) on end with scraps of drawings I’ve made while hanging out with my kids or prepping art lessons. These pieces come together later as collages when I have the opportunity for more focused creative decisions.

Beyond my own divided studio attention, I’m confronted with greater examples of ruptured entities on a daily basis: our planet, relationships, rights, and institutions seem to be fracturing at an ever-increasing rate. What renewed whole can be created from these broken parts? My studio objectives parallel this question, as I gather together the scrappy fragments of life and reconstruct them into something new and more compelling than their previous form.

Anna Wetzel Artz is an artist and educator based in Shoreline, WA. She holds a BFA from Kansas State University, an M.Ed. from Rockhurst University, and was a 2008 member of Oax-i-fornia, California College of the Art’s collaborative design workshop. Anna teaches elementary art in public schools, and maintains a quarterly art subscription called Go Slow Art Club, which connects collectors to affordable small works and features regular guest artist collaborations.

As in my own daily life, nature is the grounding presence in my paintings. My work often begins with repetitive marks that evoke natural landscapes found in both my current home of the Pacific Northwest, as well as from my childhood home on the Kansas plains. Replicating organic textures has a centering effect on me when I cannot be outdoors, but ideally I'm able to capture the marks on-site and bring them back to the studio. Whether it's a deliberate drawing session or just a notebook brought along on a family visit to the beach, plein-air work informs everything else and nourishes my creativity.

the ‘Go Slow Art Club’ as well as her upcoming residency on the tallgrass plains this summer, as part of the Prairieside Outpost Artist Residency. She'll be immersed in the quiet ecosystem of the prairie, researching and remembering the region she grew up in and observing everything from a fresh perspective.

Visitors will park on the street. There is a sidewalk in front of Anna’s home, a wood chip path and two cement steps to reach the front door. Anna’s studio space is a home office not far past the front entrance. There will be a clear pathway from the front door to the studio space.