Ann Tanksley

Paintings That Tell A Story

Ann Tanksley brings the art tender scenes of a fertile culture through her intimate renderings of daily life. Ann’s sensitivity to humanity, particularly to her black heritage, portrays a kinship of people with their natural environment. Her works are saturated with vivid abstract symbolism. A well trained awareness is reflected in Ann’s successful blending of the simple as the complex, the pure as a mixture and the real as abstract. Her bold and energetic use of color creates an exotic flavor while she maintains a soft gentle undercurrent with constraining subdued earth tones.

Ann’s work is in several permanent collections including: The Johnson Publication Co. of Chicago, Illinois; the City College of New York, New York; the Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; the Sewickley Academy of Sewickley, Pennsylvania, the  Maitland Art Center,  Maitland, Florida;  Medgar Evers College of Brooklyn, New York; The American Women in Art Album, located at  The National Museum of Women in the Arts,  Washington, DC; the Apex Museum of Atlanta Georgia; and Dillard University,  New Orleans, Louisiana; the  Virginia Commonwealth University School of Arts,  Doha, Qatar; The Hewitt Collection of African American Art,  Bank of America.  She is in numerous private collections, including Oprah Winfrey’s, Morgan Freeman’s, Gordon Parks’s, Susan Taylor’s and a host of other collectors of note.

A graduate of the Carnegie Mellon University at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Ann has studied at the Art Students League, the Parsons School of Design, the Bob Blackburn Printmaking Workshop and the New School for Social Research, New York, New York. She is listed in “Who’s Who in American Art” and “250 Years of Afro-American Art.”

Ann has published a portfolio of prints entitled “IMAGES OF ZORA”, based on the writings of Zora Neal Hurston and curated by Adolphus Ealey of the Barnett Aden Collection.  Ann has also co-authored a book with Hugh R. Butts, M.D. entitled “Zora: A Psychoanalytic and Artistic Interpretation of the Life and Works of Zora Neal Hurston.”

Her most recently commissioned illustrations include the illustrations for Harper Collins Publishers children’s book Six Fools by Zora Neal Hurston the cover illustration of Monifa Love’s novel Freedom in the Dismal published by Plover Press, the New Yorker magazine: a cover illustration for the University of Georgia press titled The Power of the Porch by Trudler Harris and “The African American Voices of Triumph” series of Time-Life Books, Inc. Several advertisers have purchased the use of Ann’s work including Absolute Vodka, Colgate-Palmolive, Pepsi Cola Company and Coors Brewing Company.