Atmospheres & Transmission

NEW WORK BY ANNE SCOTT BARRETT

Long summer drives watching the landscape change and allowing the imagination to take over. The only signs of man are the lines of transmission connecting us. Using homage to traditional Chinese ink painting, I invite the viewer to focus on the aesthetics of the brush strokes and composition to bring out the essence of atmospheric changes and lines of transmission that connect and travel through our lives. The work moves through open spaces to industrial stations, revealing paths taken through flight and migration and knowing the way home by landmarks and patterns.

CAPTAIN'S LOG

May 5, 2024
Storm Shelter
When I was little and visiting my grandparents outside of Tallulah, Louisiana, we would take drives to places like Poverty Point, Monroe/West Monroe, and Lake Providence. On the nighttime drives home, I would stretch across the backseat of Poppie’s whale of a Lincoln Towncar and watch the power lines and distant lights. Mimi would always look for “our light” twinkling in the vastness. It was like picking out a star in the night sky. All those lines of transmission going to and through all the places called home and she knew which ones lead to ours.

I have a show coming up @citygroceryoxford in July, and the work is meditating a lot on transmission, transportation, culverts, streams, paths, and maps.

I’m deconstructing memories and landscapes and always chasing that line my hand is compelled to make. I can’t talk without using my hands, so it makes sense that the compulsion to gesture comes out in lines.

May 13, 2024
Last Coast

Scattered thunderstorms are making their way through the paintings for my show at City Grocery.

A gulf coast sunset when a cold ceiling of clouds moves in to frame it. The air is cold and the water is warm. Fishing from shore, a few last casts.

May 20, 2024
Texas Flatness
I heard a guy on the radio talking about Texas- I was in Texas at the time, hauling ass on a toll road where the landscape was mesquite and power lines forever. The guy said, “There are parts of Texas so flat; if you stand outside, you can see the curve of the earth; if you stand on a tuna fish can, you can see the back of your head.”

June 12, 2024

I worked at Creative Sources on the square in Oxford when I was twenty-something. Darby had just bought the place and hired me as a framer. It was a cool, moody gallery and frame shop on the square back when it was a mix of commerce and weirdness.

The venerable Semmes Luckett popped in one day with a little drawing inside a folder. He had just returned from testifying in Hunter S Thompson’s explosives trial, and someone had made a little sketch of him being sworn in on the stand.

I looked at the drawing, and my hands went numb- there I was, holding an original Ralph Steadman drawing. A real Ralph Steadman drawing in my hands of the man standing before me.

I quit breathing for a spell.

Semmes was tickled that I was tickled, leaving me with some profound parting words: “Life isn’t a contest, Anne Scott. It’s not about how much shit you can take in a day. “

Building frames is tedious work. My usual local frame shop is worth its weight in gold. Framing everything for my upcoming show myself has proven to me that I still have it—but shoowee, I'm not so sure I want it.

Auroras in Mississippi

A geomagnetic storm came swooping by and we saw auroras in Mississippi!

About the artist

ANNE SCOTT BARRETT is a Mississippi native born in Yazoo City and in a long-term relationship with Oxford.
Works primarily with watercolor, gouache, paper, and ink

Three decades of work in design, murals, portraits, and illustration.
Poster design for hundreds of events, large and small, including local, national, and international touring acts, and sacred Blues artists.

  • Oxford Thirtieth Confernce for The Book

    Poster design for the Oxford Conference for The Book, hand-painted in watercolor and gouache on paper

    about The Oxford Conference for the Book 
  • How to Make An Egg Sandwich

    Illustration for
    Square Table: A Collection of Recipes from Oxford, Mississippi-
    Oxford Cocktail Compendium.

    cookbook available here 
  • Gorgeous Eyes Poster

    Public Health poster design
    Pandemic-era design to thoughtfully, and kindly spread awareness.

1 of 3
  • Sixteenth Annual Oxford Film Festival

    Watercolor, gouache, and a little iced coffee on paper

    about Oxford Film Fest 
  • Theatre Oxford's Production of A Midsummer Night's Dream

    Watercolor and gouache painting used as a projected backdrop

    about Theatre Oxford 
  • Join and Give to the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council

    about YAC 

The Time Machine in old photos