2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts. As a multi-year Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and Nevada Arts Council, Los Angeles’s Solaris Management Group filmed Martina in her studio loft at the Riverside Artist Lofts in Reno, Nevada.

Anna Maria Mackowitz’s images are moving. With full use of the color palette, the painter abandons the creative act of an untamed force and captures the quality of the elementals on canvas and paper. There is nothing artificial, painted, nor polished. The works are not subject to any order, and yet they are not thrown. They are focused.

It is perhaps music that gives the drive to these images. Or nature with all its aspects: violent, waxing, vibrating. But with Anna Maria Mackowitz, the perceived exterior merges with the interior in an understanding that it is the only reasonable way. The paintings are snapshots of desire and death. At the moment the shape becomes human and perception into play, the viewer also comprehends a gesture, a sign, a body. Shape is recognizable, but appears not detained, not even dispelled. What emerges dissolves instantly on again. Not because the artist wants it so, but because it is so.

Snapshots of vitality and dissolution, and these two are not in contrast. Desire is not compatible with a concept of death as destruction. Death/dissolution is only one phase in the constant progressive movement, which is also desire at the same time. Energy is not exhausted, only changed, reshaping itself again and again. Once she is deep blue, once azure, another time turquoise. Once calmly forming water? An eye? Due to another eddy rising high, something looks for an exit, another creates a border. Ensuring that everything has already been said. “Fair enough!” seems to express the painter. It is enough—the essence, the energy, the movement, the strength to paint—in it all beauty is contained as potential.  
-Erika Wimmer

Countless layers of paint superimpose the picture surfaces of Anna Maria Mackowitz. In her work, the light gets caught in the picture, color is not visible by light, but rather the light penetrates the color and becomes a significant polarity between traditional structures and their reshaping.

In this case, the subject is waived; the color with all its diffuse modulations is the focal point. Shapeless - abstract as an organic flow, the painting of Anna Maria Mackowitz develops itself, reflecting passage of time, growth and change, emergence and death.

The images draw the viewer into a dimension of infinity– mysterious, compacting. Like a sweeping symphony caught on subtle color schemes like filmy vibrations on profound images.

"If you could only hear the sound of snow." (Hakuin Ekaku)
-Elisabeth Melkonjan


[biography translated by Amanda Hinson]

On March 28, 2015 & March 27, 2016 we celebrated SWAN Day.

Northern Nevada women artists join host and dance artist L. Martina Young and the International Community of Women Artists for “SWAN DAY” event - an international holiday, initiated by author Isabel Allende, acknowledging ‘Support Women Artists Now.’ SWAN DAY events are created in mutual solidarity with and for all women artists who offer sustaining visions for a conscientious and generative world. We bring favorite food dishes to share and speak to and for our work in the world, together. Access Registrar with weblinks to the women artists present.

HERSTORY
(y)our telling ways

We come as a collaborating force, a rhythmic wave,—ourselves, the healing art;
We come tethered to our being, an age of ground from which all bodies forth;
We come with our knowing, our blessedness, with our transforming continuities,—
        
        ”all the lives we’ve had”

We come from Idaho and Chicago, New York and LA and Riverside, to Reno,--
 
        “here we are, together, at the same time, for a reason”

We are ‘firsts’ for this and for that: the first woman, the first black, first black woman…

        “I always made things but didn’t know what to call it”

We love jewelry; we love cooking; we love dancing; and we tend our own gardens,--

        “And there was no one to say, ‘What?!’ “

We come to stay connected: to listen; to witness; to respond; to understand,--

        “significant losses”

We are early, sometimes by a week; we are late, just by minutes; but mostly
    we are always on time,--

        “it happens”

We speak more often to our sisters; we speak more deeply; we see more clearly,--

        “It’s a calling,—to do what is asked of you”
        “Fun?—no, it’s none of that!”
        “But it does happen; it is happening”

And no doubt it will happen all over again …





The scribed notations during SWAN Day.