Ann Vandervelde, Lopez Island, Washington artist, creates works that reflect structure, objects, texture, and color through observation and simply feeling the moment. Her materials are a mixture of papers, acrylics, oil pastels, and graphite. Shape takes form, and images appear and disappear like building a story, complete with a beginning, middle, and climax. For Vandervelde, the challenge is to accept that a composition is never quite done, that it has the capacity to evolve and change and be understood separately from the initial vision. Artist Statement "I have always believed that paintings are a form of language. An image elicits immediate dialogue between itself and the viewer and it is not essential (sometimes counterintuitive) to understand what the artist was thinking/feeling at the moment of creation. A painting has a life that draws upon others’ experiences and that is what makes it so powerful. My painting….​has gone through many genres and multiple media. I have moved from watercolour to collage with poured inks and on to acrylics and oil pastel. I’ve played with papers, Bristol board, and canvas. I am always struck by the complexities of life and I have attempted in my painting to pare down those structures into something simple and readable; an image that the viewer can relate to on a personal level. ​Nature, of course, plays such a huge role in my work. I am fascinated by the repetitive shapes, the rhythms, the curves and angles, and the lights and darks of life. We tend to take for granted so much of what we see and we usually see images as large whole compositions. Like a scientist or naturalist I think it’s important to take something apart; break it down into pieces and then bit by bit reshape. As a former English teacher, I used to take my students outside in the fall and ask them to look at a grand old maple or oak tree before an initial writing assignment. What did they see? At first, they only saw the whole – the leaves, the branches, the trunk, all neatly connected. I then asked them to look between the leaves, at the light playing behind. What about the patterns that the sweeping branches produced? If they merely seized upon a frame within a frame, how did that change the whole? I asked them to create a window using just a fragment and describe what they then saw. It was an exercise that bore marvelous descriptions and stemmed from their own personal experiences. They were quite surprised. ​Visually I am drawn to fractured elements, like the myriad fragments that make up our complex daily lives. We are layered, not unlike landscapes, rock formations, fields of wildflowers, and cityscapes. If one views our planet from above it is so beautifully carved and etched and patterned. My job is to capture that moment, that mystery expressed in color and texture.​I am now in my 70s and find that I am the most creative I have ever been, more willing to experiment, and more driven to produce. Born after WWII I’ve seen the collapse of world orders and the beginnings of new as history repeats and repeats itself. Artists, I believe, play a vital role in the observation and emotional response to this story. Mine is of walking in the woods, on the beach, snorkeling with sea life, and watching the resurgence of spring. It is color, texture, and energy that I feel from this sensory wealth that I try to bring to my paintings and share with the viewer."