Ann McRae lives and works in Stamford, Connecticut. Her paintings, drawings, watercolors, and etchings begin with journaling and automatic writing — her own words as the skeleton beneath everything that follows. The subject is her experience growing up female in the American South: the suppression, the religion, the pressure to behave. Drawing on the intricate traditions of Persian miniaturists, she works back into those initial marks with line and paint, transforming what started as helplessness and anxiety into something that holds its ground. McRae's process moves between two poles. The work begins with meditative, spontaneous drawing — a way to access what sits below the surface, conscious and unconscious alike. From there she translates those marks into watercolor using a technique that is precise and highly controlled. The tension between the two is where the work lives: each piece holds both the freedom of the first mark and the discipline of everything that came after. The titles make the work clear without explaining it away: Suppressed, Get Out, No Pass, Dishonesty Causes a Tsunami of Chaos, The Tyranny of Urgency. McRae received a BFA in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design and has studied at the Arts Students League, Manhattan Graphics Center, and Silvermine School of Art. She has exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Cluster, Victory Hall Drawing Rooms in Jersey City, and Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn. She is a member of the Loft Artists Association, Stamford, CT.