My paintings, drawings, and films combine the dual points of view of adult and child to create archetypal, iconic imagery rich with beauty and power.

Beauty – aesthetic refinement – is a cornerstone of my work. As Dave Hickey states in The Invisible Dragon, beauty carries within it power, weight and meaning, and is a persuasive tool, and I wield it this way in my work.

I start from the place of the personal and make paintings, drawings and films – right now specifically of Anne Bonny, the female pirate, and Calico Jack Rackham, her Captain and lover – that introduce the feminine into objects or scenarios of “masculine” aggression or power.

Romanticism, in the classic sense of the word (referring to the sublime), is also a critical element in my body of work. Nature – vast and expansive, in the form of the “wild and unfathomable (Henry David Thoreau)” ocean – is the setting for each of my pieces.

Sound and image paired synesthetically is a final integral element of my work. My paintings have sound, large-scale film installations function as moving paintings, and the work depicts the epic pulse of the ocean and the lapping of the waves.

-Annie Simpson 2010