‘The Gift of Flight’ – Anne Spudvillas – the bid is at $350

Every morning Anne rises with the sun and makes her way down to the foreshore.There, she joins 10-20 other women, and some men, all gathered for an invigorating morning ritual.

With the sun still scattering blood orange light, from the base of a twilight sky, they all enter the water, some running and plunging, some taking a more reserved approach.

So, some time in the early Victorian morning, an award winning portrait artist bobs happily in the waves. The group calls themselves the Salty Bitches and Anne has been grateful to find a sense of community with them.

‘I moved here to the bay from a house on the Murray/Darling confluence where I was surrounded by water, wildlife and an abundance of birds. It was a magical place, very hard to leave. The thing that has helped me settle here on the bay is the company of the swimmers and the unpredictable beauty of the bay from day to day.’

Though Anne is an accomplished visual artist, she is presently working on her first big written literary contribution, in the form of a memoir: ‘It’s a photo memoir of my ten years living on the Murray River that I loved so much. I’m reliving it as I search through the thousands of photos I took while I was there.’

She is a magnificent photographer and you will be able to see her more recent photographic work in an up coming exhibition, some of which will document those early morning swims. Keep an eye on her website (link below) for the where and when details.

Anne often uses her own photos as references, and she has done a great many exquisite portraits, such as the one below of Leigh Hobbs.

In Anne’s often life sized portraits, her subjects seem substantial full of emotional nuance. Anne is particularly canny at capturing a glint of a smile and all the different shades of meaning within this gesture, from impish to begrudging. Mood is further explored in her backgrounds, often becoming an abstract aura of colours cradling her figures, like sunlight refracting through a crystal. Below is a portrait of Isobelle Carmody and her daughter.

When conceptualising the artwork for Li Cunxin’s autobiographical picture book ‘The Peasant Prince’, Anne was able to travel to China and take many photos, some of the real people in Cunxin’s story. She speaks with care and great sensitivity when describing learning how to capture non-western faces during this project, considering something like the general difference in bone structure or even expression.

Anne chooses real people to pose for her main characters which she photographs as reference for her artwork. Observing how people operate in their day to day lives, noting something as subtle as how objects are carried adds great authenticity to her work. Through this detailed, hands on analysis Anne is able to gently relate the spirit of a place.

Other small but impactful choices during this project include the use of Chinese rice paper as a base for the final artworks as well as wolf and goat hair brushes. Even changing to oil paints once Cunxin arrives in America to visually convey the socio-economic difference. All these deliberate decisions add hidden depth to subtly enrich the reader’s experience.

Anne is nothing if not thorough when devising characters and artworks for upcoming books. Each new project is researched and often made into a small concertina book. She meticulously structures her pages often cutting characters out and playing with layering from background to foreground. Each book also gains its own unique colour palette, in which the shifts in colour and medium expand upon the written story.

Examples include ‘Night School’, a collaboration with Isobelle Carmody, with its chilling frosty blues contrasted with the warmth of yellow lamps illuminating children’s faces and hands, or the dramatic minimalism of black, white and red in ‘Swan Lake’, Anne’s re-imagining of the classic ballet but set on the Murray-Darling river. She is very skilled at colour theory and her character’s skin has a particular radiance and depth that bring a page to life.

When looking at Anne’s spectacular body of work, it becomes apparent she has an intriguing read on the world and its people:

‘ART to me is work that is created from the heart – be it visual, performance or music.’

‘The Peasant Prince’, though one of many beautiful picture books under Anne’s belt, was a special project for her and has even made its way into her kite design.

When assembling her ideas and materials for the kite, she invited Isobelle and some of her other mountain retreat guests to contribute their hopes and wishes on red cloth swatches that were then attached to the tail.

‘My own wish is for kindness and love for everyone,’ she said.

Then came the papier mache.

Now the kite has been completed, yellow-green Gingko leaves flow over Chinese characters, producing a meditative effect. Anne is always taking store of the natural world around her. A heron scouting for fish, the full moon behind dark branches, her favourite tree. This is represented in her lovely kite.