Anna Simmons

22 October to 17 November

Education

1963                BA (Hons) Italian & Art History, University College, London

1963 - 90         Various teaching appointments and intermittent painting

1990 - 91         Year spent in California near San Francisco attending art workshops

1991 - 94         Central St Martin's School of Art, London

Exhibitions

2007                Beaux Arts Bath, Solo Exhibition

                        Study Society, London

2006                Beaux Arts Bath – Landscape Exhibition

                        RAC, Pall Mall, London

2005                Beaux Arts Bath – Solo Exhibition

2004                Morgan Boyce Gallery, Marlborough

                        Waterhouse & Dodd, Cork Street, London

2003                Beaux Arts Bath – Summer Exhibition

                        Short Listed for Garrick Milne Painting Prize

2002                Beaux Arts Bath – Summer Exhibition

                        Wine Street Gallery

Sinfield Gallery

2001                Beaux Arts Bath- Solo Exhibition

The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London

20:20:20:  Beaux Arts Bath - 20th Summer Exhibition  

1999                Solo Exhibition, Beaux Arts Bath

                        Artists of Fame and Promise, Beaux Arts Bath

1998                Geisler Gallery, Munich, Germany

£1,000 for best Painting, Summer Exhibition, Handel House, Devizes

1997                Summer Show, Handel House, Devizes, Wiltshire                     

1996                Cadogan Art Gallery, London

1995                Solo show, Ainscough Gallery, Kensington, London

1994                Solo show, International House, Piccadilly, London

1991                New Art Gallery, Palo Alto, U.S.A

                        Drawing Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London

Publications

2001                Article called ‘Artists Eye’, Art Review

                        Illustrated article in ‘Artists and Illustrators’ April edition

Anna Simmons - Catalogue Essay 

‘…trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy.’  

William Wordsworth ‘Intimations Of Immortality’

Anna Simmons does not describe herself as religious. Nonetheless, for her - as for so many painters throughout history from Rembrandt to Diebenkorn (both inspirations to her) light is a spiritual metaphor. Its infiltration into dark interiors represents some truth, some gently persistent inner self that will not be quelled. “One is always looking for it,” she says, “unaware that it has been present all along”.

It is impossible to extricate this visual celebration of the ‘real self’ from Simmons’ own artistic journey. Despite having drawn and painted all her life, she did not go to art school (Central St Martins), until the age of 50. Once there, she says, she felt reborn, with field trips to the South Bank and Waterloo Station igniting a passion for the light and space of awe-inspiring architecture, and its relation to humans, that has informed her beautifully precise, elegant work ever since, and shows no sign of waning.

Simmons says the most creative part of her job, the eureka moment, is in first identifying the subject she wants to paint - be it the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall as viewed from its highest point, or the light-splashed tiled floor of Como Cathedral. Back in her studio in Wiltshire, she tinkers with light and dark to change the atmosphere, and adds deliberately nondescript characters - a poignant juxtaposition of diminutive human figures and the vast, unyielding spaces they rush through or loiter within. In groups, pairs, or singly, seemingly lost in thought in the silent, stoney foyers (In From the Snow) or preoccupied with matters far beyond the canvas’s reach (Under the Cupola) – all her figures seem ineffably alone.

This collection of new work shows the beginnings of a development from the ornate, ecclesiastical interiors, ‘the patterns and pews’, of past years towards a starker, more minimalist vision.  Modern and municipal spaces such as underground stations and Canary Wharf, with their bold shapes, neutral shades and plain surfaces, provide scope for Simmons to indulge her fascination with light, atmosphere and subtle harmonies of colour. Her eye for pleasing geometry – often found in the smaller features of colossal buildings - also comes to the fore: in The Long Way Up an escalator rises up and away from the viewer and diagonally across the canvas, slicing it up in near-Constructivist fashion, while Convocation II sees a man dwarfed and seemingly trapped in a warm, carpeted cell by the angles of the grand staircase he is descending.

It is thanks to her quietly life-affirming tone that the emotional pull of the work is contemplative rather than sorrowful. Typical is the painting Trailing Clouds of Glory where commuters bustle through a walkway to their train, away from the celestial  glow of the just-visible outside and, briefly, into darkness. The thinnest mist of light accompanies them on their way, and before long, we know, they will be bathed in sunshine again.

Anna Britten 2007

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