Anne Schutte Statement

"Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."
                                                                                                                                                                                      - Kant

My drawings merge emotional issues with formal tensions. They present an ongoing battle; oppositions of emotion, rhythm, shape and form.  My ambition is to communicate energy and movement; to create forms that are compelling and confrontational, yet interlocked within their own space.  I want to make "drawings" which are assertive works of art.

Drawing offers me a direct way of seeing and challenges me to preserve the integrity of the initial response to the image as I take greater risks trying to reach beyond the limits I have established.  Mixing media allows me to work the surface, work back into the surface and exploit different ways of applying material.  My large-scale works are physically demanding; they are a performance.  I explore different ways to make marks -- lines which are an extension of my entire arm, marks which exist outside the confines of traditional draftsmanship. The shapes construct a dialogue; an event with everything in a state of flux.  Their fast lines create dualistic forms -- both concave and convex, actively combative and at the same time vulnerable.   I make a conscious effort to fuse complex, aggressive forces into a reciprocal interplay of form.  I try to hold the potentially explosive gesture in check through an awareness of the relationship of image to field.