For over 25 years, I have been making work that addresses the psychological effects of change, loss, illness and aging, and more recently, the frustration, fear and anger that has permeated world events. I do this by combining text and drawing as a way of mapping or processing the ways I see these complex issues affecting my own day-to-day living and in the world at large.
 
The text in my drawings starts as a stream of consciousness, in Spanish and English, where I look to consider what is of most importance at that moment. Covering the parts that that I find redundant or irrelevant, I will translate words or make a notation that provides a context for themes that emerge as I work. I intersperse sections of drawing using layers of color, rubbings, texture, and tape, to suggest expanses of rock, sky, water or aerial landscapes. In some sections, I will draw with broken pieces of metal, incising and abrading the surface.
 
I have expanded how I approach my drawings by including photographic material and small sculptural objects in some of my large-scale scrolls. I make these to hang on the wall, move into the space of the room or suspend from the ceiling as two-sided works away from the wall. The larger scale of both my scrolls and my modular groupings of drawings, allow me to show a continuum with changes in mood and tone, that relates to how I see things shifting over time.
 
By crossing out sections of text, covering drawing, circling or pointing arrows at problems in my work, I am deliberately underscoring areas of imperfection and “mistakes” and how I see them as part of the picture. I have a desire to lay bare things that may be problematic, to include areas that speak to agitation and unrest as much as to moments of quiet and repose. 

Anne Gilman
2025