Anna PATALANO

Artist Statement

PROJECT STATEMENT: This project investigates the passage of time through an iterative drawing process. Each work was produced on a single sheet of paper, with each day’s drawing layered directly over the previous image, allowing residual marks to remain visible. This method creates a cumulative visual record in which erasure and retention function simultaneously. At each stage, the drawing was documented photographically and translated into a digital print, preserving discrete temporal moments prior to further transformation. The resulting body of work operates as a sequence of evolving states, foregrounding time as durational, nonlinear, and materially embedded within the surface of the image.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GENERAL STATEMENT: I work against the idea that artists must constantly explain, brand, or perform for cultural approval. My practice grows out of decades of painting, teaching, and building alternative art communities, moving fluidly between image-making, teaching, and acts of cultural resistance that question institutional authority and algorithmic taste.

I’m not interested in producing work that conforms to trends or market logic. For me, art is a form of disruption — a way to reclaim attention, autonomy, and creative voice. I come from a tradition that taught artists to defend their work with theory, but I no longer believe art needs protection by language. The world is already over-explained. My practice moves in the opposite direction — toward raw looking, toward accidental structure, toward the quiet rebellion of noticing what most people step past.

I don’t aim for consensus or polish. I’m more interested in friction, presence, and the freedom to remain creatively ungoverned.