Budapest

So, you are a collector

By chance a supplier, friend, colleague asked me to introduce her artist at the Center for Contemporary Art (CCP) in Norwalk, CT.  My response, I don’t know; she quipped, just some few words.  Not shy I introduced Ann Tanksley, then unknown to me, sat through her talk, and proceed to avariciously consume half of the unique monotype prints on display.  Her use of shapes, color, movement, and deceptively “childlike” looking elements, yet masterful details, moved me.  Can I buy the plates, too?  After a suspicious, almost contempt-full look, Ann replied, why would I do that?    Not sure how I recovered, but after conversations with her, and when Master Printer Anthony (Tony) Kirk brought my night’s bounty and invoice a soft but firm voice exclaimed, so “you are a collector!”.

Though untrained in Art History, and not having stayed at a Holiday Inn recently, for me Ann Tanksley’s work is a bridge (both generational and stylistic) between the Harlem Renaissance and the current generation of African American Art.  I have placed her with her contemporary Al Loving and followed by TAFA, Ghanaian artist, in his own words the “divine drummer trying to materialize the transient, the spiritual, to search the soul of our hopes, fears and visions”.  A drummer, keeper of the “collective consciousness” and perhaps pain of the relative monetary, if not intrinsic, value of his works versus his broader peers.