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Recent Media Coverage of Annie L. FerderBEND LIVING ARTIST PROFILE
BY SANDY ANDERSON Annie Ferder holds up a half sheet of 300-pound Triple E paper. The "E" stands for "elephant," and as she stands barefoot on the champagne carpet in her studio, the paper - 40 inches wide, 60 inches high - equals her five-foot height. Early in life, the artist saw a large-scale painting and promptly declared, "That's what I want to do when I grow up." And so it is. Her small frame gives new meaning to the idea that less is more. Ferder has a huge spirit that easily fills a room; her paintings command space with a complex, unique beauty. A watercolorist, she is especially drawn to botanical subjects. Starting at around age five, Annie would draw the flowers in her mother's garden by day and color them by night. She does the same today. "I especially love peonies for their inherent complex composition," she says. A current series of of Ferder works portraying Oregon wine grapes reveals the same attraction to simple shapes with intriguing variations of color and texture. The merlot, cabernet sauvignon and pinot noir grapes she depicts are luscious, sun-filled and ready for picking. One particular childhood occasion shaped her approach to her life's passion. Accompanying her father to a hardware store, she spotted a two-canvas paint-by-number oil set. The colors beckoned from their wells between the brushes. "I begged by dad to buy it for me," Annie recalls. "I finally convinced him when I promised to complete both paintings. But some colors ran out before I could finish the second canvas. I had to remix the remaining colors to match the depleted ones." This experience taught Ferder two important lessons: how to mix precise colors and how to conduct business. Today her color sense remains true. She is an excellent businesswoman and she always keeps her word. Ferder moved to Bend from Salem 12 years ago after raising her two sons. Intent on a fresh approach to her art and her life, she loaded her car with canvases, paints and brushes. She has long loved to bicycle and talk walks through Central Oregon's landscapes, often with a camera at hand to capture inspiring sights. "Diversification is the key to being a successful artist," says Ferder, who places her work in a wide variety of outlets. She sells her large paintings through agents and gallery exhibitions, welcoming the challenges of commission work; she teaches watercolor classes and creates greeting cards and digitally scanned French-style giclée prints, which use archival papers and inks. A member of the Tumalo Art Company, an artist's co-op, she can be found demonstrating the effects of using salts with her paints when she tends the Tumalo gallery. Years ago, an art professor at Western Oregon University criticized her work as "detailed... tight." Now Ferder accepts that comment as a positive statement. She prefers to work with explicit, controlled line and color to create a pure realism. She uses dozens of her own color photographs for reference in a single work, drawing the image free-hand in a magnified scale on large paper. She "glazes," or layers, multiple paint washes, giving depth and realism to the subject. For the final step, she leaves the painting overnight, looks at it with a critical eye the next morning and then, if it measures up, signs it. In the process, she achieves a personal expression that moves beyond mere representation to a complex composition of texture, light and color. Sandy Anderson is a sculptor, potter and freelance writer. She lives in Bend with her husband, sled dog and yearling filly. |
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