Anne-Marie Delaunay-Danizio is a French-born artist, whose early artistic sensitivity was shaped by French Modernism. As a self-taught artist, Ms. Delaunay-Danizio enrolled in an MFA program at NHIA, now The Institute of Art and Design at NEC, in January of 2018. Her process during the two-year program led her to return to her initial love of painting. In her 2020 MFA thesis, she identifies as an abstract expressionist painter, who challenges the concept of an artistic drive as exclusively male, and within the limitations of the gender binary. She lives in Waltham, MA, with her family and has exhibited her artworks in Arlington Cambridge and Lowell, MA, Manchester and Hooksett, NH, New York City, NY, and Luxembourg. Her artist practice is in Allston, MA.
Q&A
What are your earliest memories of being artistic? I believe early in my life. I survived a terrorist attack at age six during the end of the war of Independence of Algeria and my way to cope and to feel alive was by learning how to read and write, draw and paint, and sing I am also a creative writer (English)
When did art become a pursuit? As a teenager in Paris in the 11 grade. I frequented an informal painting studio in Genevilliers, a working-class suburb of Paris. I learned the basics of oil painting. I also took sculpture workshops in wood and stone organized by a local sculptor in the South of France, during the summer vacations.
Are you self-taught or formally educated in visual art? Mostly self-taught, but I reconnected with painting during my MFA program at the former New Hampshire Institute of Art now the IAD @ NEC. I graduated in January 2020, and have deepened my painting practice through the Covid years. I also create textile sculptures and I am a writer of short memoirs and stories.
How did you first become involved with CAA? I do not remember exactly when: 10-12 years. I became involved with the Arlington Center for the Arts when my children were little, and through the ACA, I became a member of the CAA. I had many long hiatuses in my artistic career, moving and adjusting to different countries, raising a family, earning a living as a teacher… So becoming involved with ACA, and then the CAA became very affirming.
In what other ways are you involved in the local art community? I was an active member of a cooperative studio, the Turtle studios in Newton. My application to lease studio space in the Western Avenue Studios in Lowell has been recently accepted. I am looking forwards to being part of this new community. Otherwise, I am also active on social media, and a member of several art associations.
What role do you think the artist plays in society? I think the artist is the medium, a translator and mediator of contemporary unease, but also a bringer of hope. As a survivor, I believe that to create is to be alive and bring hope.
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Smoke and clouds 5, Acrylic on canvas
What medium do you currently work in and how did you choose this medium? Acrylic, I like the fluidity, liquidness, and forgiveness of the medium. I am also nervous around flammable, volatile substances. I am an obsessive doodler, and I am presently staining smaller canvasses and refining shapes with paint and ink acrylic markers.
What is your creative process? Where are you finding ideas for your art these days? Mostly in the animal/human body and other living organisms. I let the image and meaning of each of my works reveal themselves, by using layers of diluted and fluid Golden acrylic paint, which I let drip over drop cloths. I use other approaches like glazing with semi-opaque gesso, and spraying diluted non-toxic paint with a water spray bottle. When I mist the canvas with a spray bottle, I use a mask and open the windows. I would define my approach as drawing on canvas, using acrylic ink, paint markers, vine charcoal, and graphite pencil to define shapes, along with staining and layering my canvasses. I work on several pieces at a time, moving them from floor to wall, table, and easel. Unless I am writing or working on my computer, I move a lot around the studio.
How do you choose your subject matter? Is there a reoccurring theme that carries throughout your work? I delight in colors, and in creating organic shapes and abstract landscapes. My art is a dance of trauma and celebration, in which lust for life transcends the human body, and challenges boundaries between genders, human and non-human, body and landscape. With humor, visual puns, evocations of organisms, and of internal and external body parts, I create poetics of biology. My studio is a gender-fluid zone. It is a space that allows me to generate suggestive shapes with multiple and open-ended meanings. I am in my body, a body that moves and projects movement and rhythms into the canvas.
In your opinion, what’s your best/favorite piece you’ve made? There are three large canvasses, created in 2019, and 2020, which I call the mother canvasses. All the works I am presently doing are engendered by these canvasses. “Fog and Clouds 5” is one of them.
What is one of your artistic goals? Develop my business skills.
What’s your favorite place to see art, and why? Anywhere. I walk a lot, observe everything around me, and take pictures that can be a source of inspiration for a painting or a poem. and the other venues: galleries, artist shows, museums. the flow of images on social media is also an important factor that can be both stimulating and overwhelming. I tend to become addicted.
What living artists are you inspired by? There are two artists of my generation who died at an early age that are still very influential: Basquiat and Haring. the other two surviving artists of my generation are Sheila Peppe and Carrie Moyer
Do you own any art by other artists? If so, what artists? A photograph by John Gallagher and several photographs by Timothy Wilson. Paintings by Lucy Sprayregen and an abstract work on a Yuppo paper by Wilson Hunt. A print by Karen McCarthy. a woven pendant by Jodi Collela.
Do you have any shows coming up? I will be participating in the Allston Studios Open House @ 119 Braintree Street, Allston #508 on May 14, and will have some works on display during the Turtle Studios Open House on May 21-22.
See more from Anne-Marie Delaunay-Danizio
Website: www.anne-mariedelaunay-danizio.com
Instagram: @ampmdd