Working in loose, saturated oil, Anne Kaferle paints landscapes that verge on abstraction, and present a sophisticated new vision in the tradition of landscape painting. Her paintings arise from the rugged, spacious vistas she overlooks working plein air, with skies melting into bluffs that melt to valleys. The places feel at once specific and universal, though, sometimes reading as desert, sometimes as sea, sometimes as nearly pure abstract colorfield.
For her new solo exhibition, Anne Kaferle continues her exploration of abstracted landscape.Water moves through this series in the form of saturated wet paint allowed to flow down the canvas, mimicking the flow of water through rock, and the way erosion sculpts the earth over time. In Kaferle’s work, lush swaths of color read as sky and cliff punctuated by patterns and textures that turn to cloud, snow, and rock upon closer inspection. Shadows often move through the paintings as the primary element of the composition, rich passages of deep velvety color. Kaferle’s vignettes are views of landscapes from far away, they are primarily movements of color, their specificity blurred by distance or perhaps by time.
Born in Connecticut, Anne Kaferle studied art and geology at Colby College and science illustration at UC Santa Cruz. In 2006, she moved to Utah, eventually finding home in a small desert town set below 2000 ft cliffs at the edge of the Colorado Plateau. Anne’s life centers on a profound respect and love for the natural world. Her biggest artistic influence has been time spent on local trails and rivers year-round, quietly observing. In turn, her landscape paintings draw from a deep, geologic sense of place and time.
