Anna Glantz’s paintings cycle through a range of subjects including her partner, friends, cats, horses, and often, herself. The paintings tend to look different from one another stylistically, but share an openness of interpretation while maintaining their own absurd specificity. Glantz takes enjoyment in teasing apart the meaning of images—what they mean and how they mean it—often using the language of allegory or symbolism only to cut short its translation.
Deeply attentive to the quality of the painted surface, Glantz sands, scrapes away, and paints over piece by piece, reworking colour, texture, and form. Some areas of paint become so worn and tender they appear embedded into the surface, whereas recent collaged works (using felt ribbons, magazine clippings, and yarn, for example) ply the image with a lighter touch. In her search for a space that is unknowable and yet undeniable, Glantz’s paintings evoke an unsettling ambiguity.
Anna Glantz (b. Concord, MA, 1989) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA.