Anne Stagg

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Anne Stagg, an artist and educator based in Tallahassee, Florida, creates abstract paintings that range from vibrant to almost ghostly white. Her work delves into the complexity of human interactions, societal systems, and the evolution of ideas over time. By employing metaphor through pattern and color, Stagg examines how layers of ideas interact, transform, and ultimately reveal their underlying structures.

Stagg draws inspiration from everyday human interactions and the intricacies of seemingly simple tasks. Her exploration spans various systems—legal, financial, regulatory, social, and political—focusing on their promises and the extent to which they streamline our lives. Using non-objective, geometric shapes and patterns, she captures the tension between harmony and contrast, stability and change, while investigating the rich variety of outcomes within a constrained set of visual elements.

Her work thrives on contradictions. Stagg is captivated by moments of resolution but chooses to expose the underlying frameworks that support them. Through the layering of patterns, she alters the appearance and texture of her paintings, unveiling the scars of previous layers. As Buzz Spector insightfully remarked about the nature of the surface layer in Stagg’s paintings, they are “less so many shrouds as bed linens with living limbs beneath.”