Artists Profile

Annie Adams and Peggy Sue McRae experienced the dream of most artists: three weeks of uninterrupted time to focus entirely on their art. Each independently and unknown to the other was accepted for a residency at the Morris Graves Foundation in northern California. The home and surrounding acres of Morris Graves, one of the leaders of the Northwest School of Art and described as its “spiritual leader,” became, after his death in 2001, a place where individuals in the creative arts, such as composers, playwrights, painters, and sculptors, could apply for residencies. Only one person at a time is accepted, and accommodations and meals are provided so individuals can focus entirely on their art.

Art has always been a part of Annie Adams’s life. She studied marine biology at the University of Washington, but her primary interest was doing elaborate drawings in her lab book. In retrospect, she says, this was a clue about herself she should have recognized. She is primarily self-taught but has taken many art workshops and classes over the last 20 years.

She has worked for long periods of time in different mediums–first pencil, then watercolor, monoprinting, pastels, and acrylics. She is now excited by the challenges of oil painting with possibilities limited, as Annie says, only by her imagination. During her Morris Graves residency, she painted in oils, usually from 6am-11pm. She finally felt she was experiencing enough time in the day to paint. She took daily walks, often to see a magnificent tree, finally capturing its spirit on canvas.

Annie has taught at Skagit Valley College as well as privately. This year she is offering three-day workshops in June and September. Her studio in the historic Corner Store (corner of Madden Lane and Cattle Point Rd. on San Juan Island) will be the location for demonstrations and discussions followed by trips to island locations for plein air painting. For her, becoming an artist has been a gradual process of discovery and passion.

Peggy Sue McRae says her mother always encouraged her to paint, and recently she found a watercolor of a Japanese lady in a kimono walking through an intricately detailed flower garden with Mt. Fuji in the background, painted when she was age 7. She started a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art at Washington State University in 1970, but dropped out to travel. With the islands as a home base, she became increasingly engaged in activism.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, she worked with the Earth First! Journal editorial collective in Missoula, MT, as an editor, writer, and illustrator. She sold handpainted relief prints made from her detailed pen and ink wildlife drawings at Chimera, the Artists’ Co-operative on Lopez Island, and in galleries in Montana and Eastern Washington. After she returned to Washington State University in 1995, she completed her BFA and earned her MFA in painting and sculpture. Carving stone, she explained, taught her to simplify forms. While at Washington State she taught drawing and sculpture classes.

During her Morris Graves residency, she painted in watercolor, commenting that its Zen aspect for her related to the mysticism in Graves’s paintings. The first week Peggy Sue said her paintings were “awful” and she burned them in the wood stove. A rhythm emerged, however, and the labyrinth, to which she walked every day, began to appear in her work.

Peggy Sue describes her life as built on a tripod of art, activism, and spirituality, all inter-related but different, which she tries to keep in balance. She organized the Friday Harbor Martin Luther King walk last month, commenting that each of us in our own way has a responsibility to make the world better.

Both Annie and Peggy Sue found that time alone with their art for three weeks was of inestimable value. They encourage others to seek residencies or try to create their own.

To view the work of Annie Adams, stop in at Funk ‘n Junk on Nichols St., where work from her Morris Graves residency is on display this month. Her Web site has information about workshops, www.sanjuan artworkshops.com, and soon there will be a link from her site to an online gallery of her work. You can reach her at 378-2638.

Peggy Sue’s Web site, www.rockisland.com/ pmcrae/index.html, has information about Morris Graves and the Northwest Mystic Painters. Her phone number is 370-5210.

Opening Friday, Feb. 24, the work of Peggy Sue McRae and Annie Adams will be featured as the first exhibition at the new Island Museum of Art located in the former Spring Tree Restaurant on Spring Street in Friday Harbor. Watch for more information.

Comment on this story.

COMMENTING RULES: We encourage an open exchange of ideas in our online community, but we ask you to follow our guidelines for respecting community standards. In a nutshell, don't say anything you wouldn't want your mother to read.