In the studio
Painting
as attention.
Ann Demi begins without a finished composition. She watches colours spread and mingle, notices forms and develops them. Sometimes a painting comes together in one sustained burst; at other times, she returns to it in two or three stages.
Buddha in a Golden Wind: several states of one painting from the studio archive.
An emerging image
A field of colour and the first outlines of a face. The paint suggests directions to follow.
Developing the form
Layers, lines and raised details gradually change the relationship between figure and ground.
Colour and texture
The golden figure comes together as a finished image among vivid strokes.
Process
One process
continues in another.
Paint left on Ann Demi’s palette may become the first layer of her next work. Mindfulness shapes the quality of attention she brings to uncertainty, movement and subtle changes in colour; it is not a formula for the work.