Artist Ann Powell.

Ann Powell Mixed Media

Ann Powell Photos

Ann Powell is an Oklahoma native who currently resides in Ponca City. She received a BFA with Honors from the University of Tulsa with emphasis in ceramics and painting. Ann's current work combines mixed media, collage, and original, digitally manipulated photography and photomontage. Ann has won multiple awards, and her work has been accepted in many regional and national juried exhibitions, including the Oklahoma Artist Guild , Oklahoma Biennial, Vision Makers, Edge Art Now, First Frontier Collage Society, and National Collage Society, and invitationals such as OVAC 12 x 12, Champagne and Chocolate,. Her one person and group exhibitions have included Eleanor Hays Gallery at Northern Oklahoma College, Exhibit One in Stillwater, Ponca City Art Center,and Istvan Gallery in Oklahoma City.

Ann likes to explore a wide range of content, but most f requently returns to the organic forms and patterns of nature as inspiration. Her current passions are digital fine art photography, and mixed media collage. The process of layering and collage allows for continual discovery and experimentation. The influence of the open spaces of the prairie where she lives is often visible in her compositions, which frequently have a lot of open space. The surface texture is an extremely important element in her collage work. The initial inspiration starts with images from everyday life, the human figure, trees, birds, fish, and landscapes that have been captured by the camera. These images are essentially a fragment of what the eye can actually see. The first stage of the layering process in the collages begins with digital manipulation of the photos by making a photomontage of multiple images using the computer. Ann does her own printing using archival pigment inks, and those used in collage are later coated with UV protective acrylic varnish. Traditional collage techniques are used to affix the images to canvas or panel with acrylic gels and mediums. Ann works intuitively, revising as she goes along, drawing and painting over images, and building layers to achieve a highly textured surface. In this way the associations of the images are changed, and a new environment is created from the artist’s imagination.