Annie Salness’s Studio

Last week I paid a visit to the studio and home of painter Annie Salness. Her Cedar Mill home is warm and inviting with a great view across the valley and hills.  Annie greeted me and gave me a quick tour of the house, including their rooftop deck, before we got down to discussing her work and her studio. It was a perfect fall day and the views were grand in every direction.

Not many artists have a full size basketball court in their backyard! (Annie’s husband is a high school coach. )

Annie’s training and background are in biomedical illustration, a very precise and technical kind of art career that she set aside when her children were small. Recovering from a devastating stroke seven years ago, she turned to art once again, but art of a more personally fulfilling kind, painting the things she found beautiful and nourishing.  Her still life paintings of flowers and everyday items have a fresh, spontaneous energy. She finds a special satisfaction in having developed her own methods for painting glass objects to incorporate those elements of transparency and reflection and light into her compositions.   Here she shows me the paintings for her annual calendar, which will be for sale during the studio tour.

Visitors to her studio will get to see where she sets up her still life compositions and takes many photos, from slightly different angles.

Then she views the photos on her computer screen and crops and adjusts until she finds the shot she can use to paint from.

She’ll be doing demonstrations during the studio tour at 1 and 3.  This is Annie’s third year as part of the Washington County Artists Open Studios. She really enjoys sharing her studio and work and is looking forward to this year’s tour and hoping, as all of us are, for good weather!

To see more of Annie Salness’s work and find out about her classes and commissions, check out her website and blog:  http://anniesalness.com/