Artist Statement: I paint and I construct. ​Both my paintings and assemblages use the metaphor of excavation. My formal education in landscape architecture and classical archaeology provides structure toartistic flights of fancy that always seem to revolve around some form of revelation: The attempt to unearth an object or solve a mystery. Uncovering/Covering.Leaving a Trace, a Vestige,a Palimpsest. Bio: Graceann Warn, American, was born and raised in New Jersey. From Michigan State University she graduated with a degree in landscape architecture.Later, while pursuing a Master's in Landscape Architecture at the University of Michigan and working as a landscape architect, she visited an exhibition of the last paintings of Mark Rothko. The emotional impact of that exhibition was the catalyst for great change. ​Within a year she made the decision to devote her life to making art. ​She has been a full time studio artist since 1985 with work exhibited and collected nationally and internationally. ​She lives in in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband Geoff.​ About Warn by Leslie Stainton: As a young child, Michigan artist Graceann Warn began to think of herself as an artist butit never occurred to her that people could make their livings as such.“I never knew an artist when I was growing up. I grew up in a really small town in NewJersey. We barely had an art program in my school. I went to college and became alandscape architect‚ looking back, it was the closest thing to art I could fnd. After Igraduated, I was working for a private offce in Ann Arbor, and they sent me toMinneapolis to attend an urban design conference. When I was there I took a look at theWalker Art Center. What was showing was an exhibition of the last works of MarkRothko. I went into the gallery, and, surrounded by these paintings, I had a strongemotional reaction--my heart was beating so fast and my eyes flled with tears. This wasthe frst time that abstract art had affected me in such a profound way. In retrospect, Irealized that my own work, the design work I was doing in an offce, couldn’t comparewith what art had to offer, and I decided to get a studio. My life changed within thatyear.”Graceann feels her profound reaction to Rothko’s abstracts was probably infuenced byher synesthesia, a neurologically-based phenomenon.“I will look at a color and I will taste it--as if colors have favors. And numbers havecolors. In my weirdly wired brain, I think: Yeah, well, it is red, so of course you have tohave a number four there. There are all kinds of things that cross over in my head. I haveonly recently realized that I do this. I guess I assumed everybody did--that it was anormal thing. I think for me abstract art, especially color and form, has something to dowith that, because when I look at an abstract painting I can taste it or I can hear it.”Warn’s current work, painting and assemblage, is inspired by walls--the layering ofplaster, paint, graffti, the covering over with time, over centuries, the palimpsest. Hergreatest infuences are Antoni Tapies, Cy Twombly, Franz Kline. Newer infuences areCaio Fonesca and Sean Scully. Warn’s work is collected worldwide.