• Artist: Anne McMaster
  • Art Centre: Independent Artist
  • Region: Darwin

Artwork Story

Anne is a contemporary visual artist based in Darwin, Australia.

Her explorations with printmaking and watercolour mediums have led her to investigate the coastal aesthetics of mangroves, coral, tide lines and sea faring objects.  Through the characteristics of using these materials and techniques Anne has incorporated the louvered window shapes found in tropical architecture to format her mark making and imagery.

 

In 2019 Anne was an Artist in Resident at Darwin’s Tactile Arts Studios where she researched the notion of Drift, the motion of moving on the sea, movements in time, and elements of tidal flow.

 

Anne’s watercolour practices reveal shapes and colours of the sea and atmosphere that communicate watery transparent subtleties of washes and layers. Organic shapes are layered and stacked to created formal and deliberate compositions.

 

She is currently researching how watercolour layers and transparencies can be achieved through tonal aquatints of aluminium plate etchings.

 

For many years Anne McMaster maintained her printmaking practice while living and teaching in the remote Indigenous community of Pickataramoor on Melville Island, part of the Tiwi Islands group, 80km north of Darwin. She completed her Masters of Fine Art through Monash University during this time, which investigated her role as a non-Indigenous artist living in a tropical Indigenous landscape. Her  creative explorations depicted themes of country, place and elements of contemporary Tiwi AFL football culture that has formulated from a family history of living in the Western District of Victoria.

 

Anne has been exhibiting for over 30 years and her work is included in both national and international collections. She was granted a Summer Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria and has had an edition of prints commissioned by the Print Council of Australia.