Small Pleasures

"This is a small variation of a painting I did in 2020 titled Remember the 60 Hour Work Week. That painting has been shortlisted for New Contemporaries 2021.

My background in scenic painting has drawn me to the stage and its many layers of reality. The curtain represents a boundary between the spectator and fictive space. However, without actors, this boundary creates a minimal and transitional zone, with the potential to explore multiple narratives and collective memory. I am drawn to passages, doorways, and spaces within spaces. These motifs become places I am yearning to go but can never enter into. I have the feeling if I walk into this space, there will be another one behind it creating a never-ending cycle. 

There is an obsession with shadow and shallow layering in my work that comes from a love of Trompe L’oeil. This becomes evident in decorated murals that make up rooms I create and is a reminder that the painting is a fabrication. It is this type of self-conscious painting that allows me to explore ideas around community, collective memory, and transitional interiors." - Anne Carney Raines, 2021

Accolades  

Education: RCA Painting graduating Spring 2021. 

Exhibitions: New Contemporaries 2020 – Exhibition at South London Gallery May 2021. 

Awards: Shortlisted for New Contemporaries 2021. 2 time recipient of Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.

@annecarneyraines