The Sunday Advocate, Sept. 29, 1991

"Stamford Art Assn. Hosts colorful show"

(caption) "Stratocaster Sunday: Finale," by Ann Christensen

These are the days that show up in Ann Christensen's work again and again.

A resident of Cambridge, Mass., Christensen spends spare time photographing the New England scenes that turn up in her landscape paintings. Although she is always on the lookout for potential subject matter, she thinks autumn scenes have yielded some of her most successful pieces.

"When everything is so green in New England, it is difficult to see form," Christensen, 45, said during a recent telephone interview. "So I'm always hot to go photographing in the fall. I'll go touring around for hours, looking at the way the light hits, or at different forms."

One fall Sunday, she said she "dragged" a friend along for company on one of her photographic junkets. Actually it was more of a compromise. The friend agreed to come - but only if he could bring his guitar and practice along the way, Christensen recalled.

The pair stopped to photograph a late afternoon scene in nearby Concord, and the inspiration for Stratocaster Sunday: Finale," an oil painting that won top honors at the Stamford Art Association's 11th annual Faber Birren Color Show, was set.

The show opens with a reception from 3 to 5 p.m. today at the Stamford Historical Society, 1508 High Ridge Road, and continues there through Nov. 9. More than 900 entries worldwide were submitted to the show, which was endowed by the late Faber Birren, a former Stamford resident and nationally-recognized consultant on color and its role in the human experience. That Christensen's painting should top 64 other pieces for the show's first prize - the Faber Birren Color Award and $1000. - may be testament to something Christensen long has suspected - that "color is one of my strengths." Still, she said, "Stratocaster" challenged her. Christensen said she "pushed" herself to color the sky yellow instead of blue, green, purple or other cool colors to which she is more naturally drawn, "as a kind of dare to myself.

"Yellow is not a color I use a lot out of necessity," she said. "This was a risk I took, to see if I could make it work.

"I don't accept the visual," she said. "I'll paint a sky yellow or a tree red. I take risks with color. That's one of the things I like about painting."

In that respect Christensen is somewhat like Paul Cezanne, the Post Impressionists and the Fauvists painters who use non-representational colors. Christensen discovered the artists through an introductory art course at Colby College, and was so struck by Greek sculpture and Cezanne's work, that she asked her father if she could change her major from mathematics to art. He said no, and Christensen went on to become a graphic designer - a field that she believes combines elements of both endeavors. Currently, she does graphic design for a corporation part time, and spends the rest of her time painting.

"They help each other in that color and composition are themes in both," Christensen said of graphic design and painting. "But they're opposites, in that my work in graphic design has to be neat, clean and crisp. In painting, I love to make a mess. I love paint that is goopy and drips, so I don't have to make it neat and clean."

In this way, her work is more inspired by the Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning, who is known for his wild use of paint and aggressive brushstrokes. Christensen has studied art history or painting at Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University, among other places."

"My brushwork is very energetic, so the connection (to de Kooning) is fairly obvious," she said. "But I'm a little better about it now than I used to be. My earlier work was more like de Kooning - more active and crazy. In the past two years, I've tried to get more restraint into my paintings, although that is difficult for me. I'm very impulsive."

Like other artists, striking a balance between the two - the common and the unexpected; the quiet and the crazy - is an on-going process for Christensen. But one aspect of painting - how the viewer responds to it - continues to mystify her.

"I'm not sure I'm ever thinking about what I want a viewer to think when I paint," she said. "Yet I really don't know what it is about the work that evokes such different emotions in people."

The emotion Christensen knows best at the moment is elation - at receiving top honors from Laura Rosenstock, the assistant curator for painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art who judged the Birren show. Although her work has been shown - and sold - throughout the Boston area, the Birren show marks Christensen's first major award.

"It's affirming in a general way," Christensen said. "Everyone is always wondering: 'Am I good enough?'

"This makes me feel like I'm doing the right thing."

by Joy L Haenlein