For Ani Yellowhammer, painting is a form of meditation. It is a process of reaching into the artist’s subconscious and connecting with essential life forces. Through the successive application and sanding back of oil and alkyd paints on canvas, she creates entrancing surfaces that both conceal and reveal what lies beneath. “My work is about the mystery of the Universe,” she says, “the inner and outer spaces, the inner and outer landscapes.” Some paintings have opaque, matte surfaces scraped or sanded back to reveal seemingly ancient layers of earthy hue. Others have surfaces of transparent color in high gloss. A field of vibrant color—electric blue, red-orange, or yellow-gold—may appear as a source of light, piercing through a veil of darker tone, or as a glowing cloud of cosmic dust amidst murkier surroundings. Yellowhammer explains, “I like to think of color as energy that emits from the painting outward.” Born in Virginia, Yellowhammer attended Old Dominion University and The College of William and Mary in her home state, where she continued to reside for many years working as an artist and a curator of corporate art collections. She began painting as a child and earned her living through exhibitions of her paintings in Virginia long before attending Malden Bridge School of Art in New York in the late 1980s.Yellowhammer's work is in the collections of numerous corporations across the U.S. and in private collections around the world, including England, Singapore, and Australia.