Ann Stewart is a visual artist who uses drawing, painting, and installation to investigate the visualization of perception. Stewart received her MFA from the University of Michigan and her BFA in Painting from Auburn University. She has shown her work at Fay Gold Gallery, Spruill Gallery, Mason Murer Fine Art, Knoxville Museum of Art, and the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art.


Artist Statement:
I have always had a persistent curiosity in trying to figure out how people make sense of things, how people attend to phenomena. How does what I see become what I know and how can I visualize this translation? As a visual artist, I make work that documents this process.

Drawing has been the foundation for my work since it is the most direct manner for me to inscribe my interaction with the world. A meticulous mark making and process driven working practice is the foundation for my work. My most recent body of work envisions how through the act of perception the structure of objects fades into and out of existence. Using the tools of mapping and patterning, as well as receiving inspiration from bottom up construction, I produce forms that allude to living systems, natural phenomena, and architectural structures.

In my research, I draw inspiration from the disciplines of art, cognitive science, philosophy, and architecture. Each of these fields provides me with methods to make sense of and create structure in the world. A process of gathering information and constructing models allows me to create order. By closely observing the world as it is, as I see it, or as the accumulation of marks I make, I am diagramming how I articulate things into existence through drawing.