Anne Pollard James (b. 1972)  is a contemporary figurative (mostly) oil painter. She found painting the week the world shut down in 2020 and was transformed. There is before and after. Her works explore the many ways women must navigate the spaces that surround them and take the space wanted in a place, made for and by those who often want to keep women out. 

 

“We have held our space with hard humor, or a wink and a nudge, with eyes down, or eyes drawn and staring hard, yet always with our eyes wide open to embrace and defend the space that is rightfully ours. Or the space not yet ours, but that we claim.” 

 

Her paintings are loud, hard, soft, sweet and sharp and always through the lens of the spectacular strength of women.