Swedish-Born Bay Area Figurative Artist, Anna Poole - 1960-2012
It's Anna's combination of hot and cool colors
(evoking the clash of sun and sea) that first drew our attention. We
then went on a fantastic journey through her extensive collection
of works that captured a passion for the elements (water, land) and the
human
form. Painting after painting, the female form slowly materialized from
the sea and
land as if created by it and eternally fused with it. She re-imagined
the classic Bay Area
Figurative themes of water and bathing of Elmer Bischoff (1916-1991)
with a sensual
spirit and a primal energy.
Anna Poole graduated from the San Francisco Art
Institute in
the early 1980s and set up her life and studio in San Francisco. In
addition to several one-woman shows in Bodega Bay and Freestone, group
shows at San Francisco's Live Worms Gallery in North Beach, and shows in her
native Sweden, Anna opened her studio to visitors annually during the
city's Open Studios event. For a big part of her life she lived on a
houseboat in the San Francisco Bay together with her husband, Al, and
also explored the Tropical islands of Panama in their sloop sailboat.
During their many sailing trips, Poole would paint from both the boat
and the
beach. Sometimes she painted images directly from nature in a realistic
manner reminiscent of Winslow Homer. Other
times she went deep into the water, rocks and shells, often taking the
smallest
natural form and giving it a mysterious, sculptural presence.
