Biography
Annie O’Brien Gonzales grew up on the wide-open plains of Oklahoma. After attending Oregon State University for painting and art history, she lived in Oregon, California and Colorado before settling in Santa Fe, New Mexico for 10 years. There, she utilized her academic expertise to develop innovative methods for teaching painting and creativity in her studio and at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe and at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. She was active in the arts community participating for many years as a Docent at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and a Georgia O’Keeffe Ghost Ranch tour guide. Her paintings have appeared in numerous shows throughout the West and are in private and museum collections.
In 2004, she became a full-time professional artist focusing on painting and drawing in oils, acrylic and mixed media. Memories of prairies, skies and gardens find their expression in her paintings through color, texture and pattern. While living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she began to paint abstract, still life and landscape subject matter in a unique, colorful and expressive style. Upon returning to Colorado she has been inspired by nature, organic forms and imagination combined with personal symbols and patterns. Her experience with piecing patterned fabric for quilts sneaks into the rhythm and patterning of her paintings. Working at times in oil and other times in acrylic, adding texture with charcoal, graphite, crayon or collage, she creates expressionist images on canvas, panel, or paper further refining her work by drawing, scratching and erasing surfaces.