Meet Anne Gifford | Fine Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Anne Gifford and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Anne, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
When I was a sociology major in college, I found myself opening my sketchbook instead of my textbooks, so in my sophomore year I switched into the art program. I never looked back. Although I knew that being an artist was possibly not the most lucrative path to take, my parents encouraged me to pursue my passion and I took their advice. When I graduated, I found a job hand silkscreening tee shirts, which very much resembled the factory jobs I had endured during my college summers. However, I did learn some things about silkscreen at my tee shirt job, and soon enough I was thinking about how I could use the process to create my own art. The company I worked for was very generous in enabling me to use their studio until I was able to set up my own. For the next 25 years, I created hundreds of serigraph prints. In the mid 1990s, I changed my media to watercolor, which I have used ever since.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I paint with watercolor where I build successive layers of color to create vibrant, rich, and detailed paintings. I have lived in Boulder since 1976 and find inspiration in the natural beauty of Colorado. Light, shadows, rocks, water, mountains, canyons, wildlife and whimsy are all part of my subject matter as I bring my own unique vision to my work.

In 1980 I had the great fortune to become a member/owner of the Boulder Arts and Crafts Cooperative (Gallery). It was there that my art was seen by someone seeking an artist for the Bolder Boulder poster, and they approached me. Thanks to that stroke of luck, over the years I have created eight of the Bolder Boulder 10K Memorial Day Race posters. I believe it was the posters that put me on the local map, and I have been forever grateful that my art happened to be in the right place at the right time.

I displayed my work at Boulder Arts and Crafts for 41 years. I held a part time job at the gallery as the consignment coordinator, where I thorougly enjoyed networking with local artists in order to share our venue with them.

The biggest lesson I have learned along the way is to keep painting. You can only get better, and you will.

One of the most rewarding aspects of my long career is that
it has provided me with the opportunity to bring joy and reflection into the lives of others through my artwork, and that is why I paint.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
In the old days, I would take them to the mountains for a hike, and sometimes I still do. Since many of our iconic mountain hiking areas are overcrowded now, it might be easier to show them a more secluded area such as Marshall Mesa or the South Boulder Creek trail and all of the bike paths that connect with it. You can ride forever. The Boulder Creek path is a gem, as are many other local hiking/walking areas close to the city.

We could go to the Museum of Boulder for some history and perspective, and if they were huge history buffs like I am, I would take them to the Carnegie Museum.

Some meals would be cooked at home and some eaten out. One of my favorite things is to eat dinner outdoors at my own home just outside of the city, listening to the birds and country noises. My favorite restaurants are the Gondolier, Efrain’s, Tsing Tao (delightfully quiet so you can talk), Walnut South and Murphy’s South. I like that they are all easy to get to.

Chautauqua is a delight for hiking and enjoying their historic grounds and restaurant.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?

The Boulder Arts and Crafts Gallery (Cooperative)

I would not have been able to survive as an artist if, while working at one of my tee shirt jobs and making my art prints at night, I had not befriended a person who had a photography studio upstairs. He turned out to be the director of the Boulder Arts and Crafts Cooperative. Len would let me use his mat cutter to frame my prints, but I had nowhere to hang them. That was when he twisted my arm to apply to the coop, which was moving and needed to fill up its new wall space. Surely I couldn’t get into a place like that! Ultimately, he convinced me to try, and it was the best move of my art career. The coop was co-owned by 70 artists in 1980 when I joined. We worked together for 50 years to propel the gallery into the iconic art institution it became. Artists were able to control their own display space, which is a rarity in the gallery world. There I could show a new piece of art, see how the public reacted, and then choose to make prints of it or put it in “the pile” in my studio. I had always assumed that the BACG would continue into the future, providing other young artists the same launching pad as it had done for me. It was more than a gallery. It was a family, and its closure during the pandemic was the most disappointing moment of my entire art career. I look back now with gratitude for what was, and for my good fortune to have been a part of it.

Website: www.annegifford.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annegiffordfineart/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annie.gifford.9

Other: Fine Art America website https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/anne-gifford

Image Credits
Anne Gifford