Beth Anna

    Beth Anna spent the majority of her childhood travelling through many parts of the world. An American, she was born in Papua New Guinea, where her visual sensitivity was nourished. Her firsthand experiences among a broad spectrum of societal customs were given a voice, so to speak, when she began painting at the age of 14. Eight years later, she deepend her dedication by moving to Paris and commencing what is now an international art career. To this day her figurative artwork unceasingly calls attention to the powerful and alluring language of corporeal stance and gesture that seems to transcend social preconceptions. More recently, her work has highlighted the uniue capacity of individuals to thrive in th midst of challenges, as manifest through self-expression; her oil-on-canvas paintings strive to evoke the unimagined story behind every face. She received her formal education and artistic training at both Point Loma Nazarene Univerity in California and the graduate arts program of Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She currently lives and works in Paris, teaching high school art.

    Beth Anna’s work could be described as an articulation in two-dimensional form of her questioning of the human experience.  The recurrent themes of identity and individual expression, whether it is through human landscapes, portraiture, or the intimate clichés in her photography, Beth Anna probes life in her art. The source of her questioning continually returning to the treatment of the expression of the body and its occupation of space, she inscribes her art in the historical tradition of figurative oil painting all the while manipulating this traditionally seducing technique to personalize the question of how her subjects uniquely occupy space in life. The intimacy of her work invites the viewer into an expression of how the model pulsates; the spectator is obliged to confront their own view of going about life, the honesty of their own expression, and examine their niche in society.