Ann Goldberg is a Vancouver-based painter concerned with issues of realism and the representation of everyday objects. Goldberg’s singular focus on the object elevates it from the ordinary and overlooked into an entity of complex beauty and contemplation. Goldberg masterfully walks the line between a lush, playful exuberance in subject matter, and the rigorous precision that defines her style. She has a background in both mathematics and architecture, and her work is imbued with an artistic exactness supported by the demands of these disciplines. Her focus on capturing the elusive and transient qualities of the real, opening up compelling questions about how we interpret the world and how that is translated into representation through the work.
I am interested in analyzing beauty through my art. If I see something I consider beautiful, I capture and transform it immediately through the eye of a camera. I then paint the essence of what I have captured and through my painting I am able to analyze it using the media of the old (oil painting) and new (digital photography).
In a way, I am creating a handmade reproduction of something that has been captured mechanically through a camera. I like my work to take on the painterly significance of an expressionistic stroke as exemplified by De Kooning - but at the same time retain realistic and photographic qualities at a distance; to present the painting as structurally predetermined, like a facade or a two dimensional photograph - flat & frontal by way of photography but painterly in composition.
Ann Goldberg
Image: Lifesavers ll, 2020; oil on canvas, 54x60”
c. The Artist