STATEMENT AND BIOGRAPHY

My oil paintings are a visual exploration of forms and lights cast off of structures and interior spaces. The lights and shadows projected onto these structures entice me to paint abstract compositions in close proximity. In years past, I worked in architectural and engineering firms, initially as a draftsperson and later as a graphic designer, places of work that had a prolonged personal influence. I began to observe and study sights, those which I encountered within urban and natural settings. Commutes over the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge presented a spectrum of structural configurations cast by afternoon light onto the surface of the roadway span. In creating the Reflections: on Crossing series, I painted over fifty canvases and forty drawings. At present, I find other structural views and interiors of contemporary spaces to observe and paint, continuing on an alternate avenue of abstraction and mystery.

Summers spent in a small medieval town in southwest France have given me the opportunity to observe natural imagery both within the village and surrounding countryside. Lights and shadows cast on a stone wall, for example, provide ground for abstract compositions. Patterns evolve, reminiscent of camouflage, ikat and Asian designs. Working with these natural forms is in counterpoint to the structural imagery of the Bay Area. Presented in combination as diptychs, they represent the urban and rural imagery I experience in both places.

     Anne Subercaseaux 2020


"Following the path of Anne Subercaseaux, one can see a stylistic progression from the specificity of portraiture to the sensitive renderings of her Altamont Pass series, to this highly abstractive, yet profoundly realistic work.... The geometrical abstractions of understated color in this series bring to mind the quiet works of Agnes Martin, Giorgio de Chirico and Richard Diebenkorn, who, like Subercaseaux, do not use exclamation points, italics or bold underlines."

     Susan Hillhouse Leask, Curator of Exhibitions, The Museum of Art & History, Santa Cruz
     "Reflections: on Crossing" exhibit catalogue, Morris Graves Museum of Art

"She creates for viewers representations of the environment they recognize with satisfaction as familiar, and yet she gifts them with much more than representational paintings. In all her works, even the most modest, she conveys intimations of the mystery that dwells beyond the facade of the commonplace. And in her finest works, whether paintings or drawings, she conveys a sense of the sublime equilibrium of life."

     Robert McDonald, Critic
     "The Art of Anne Subercaseaux"

"Anne Subercaseaux's series of oils find poetic equivalency in rolling hills and revolving windmills. The most arrestingly composed of her pieces, 'Transcendence/Transformation', is divided into thirds: midtone gray two-lane highway spliced by the double yellow line; scorched field edged in rusty weeds; misty hills with a house and windbreak nestled under the pearl-gray sky. Smack in the foreground of this lovely view, just off-center, stands the derrick of an electrical transformer tower so massive that the top rises unseen off the canvas. The tower, which might conventionally be viewed as an intrusion, is actually the only object capturing the downcast glints of light that lend the sense of otherworldly power within the ordinary  that earns the painting's title."

     Ann Elliott Sherman, Critic
     "California Dreaming: Artists redefine the lay of the Golden State at Triton Museum."

2015 interview at Articiple.com