This months featured artist is painter Ann-Marie Savage:
Anna Marie Savage is an award-winning abstract artist based in Omeath, Co. Louth, Ireland. She is a Fine Art graduate of the University of Ulster, where she received a First-Class Honours Degree in 2009. She has exhibited widely throughout Ireland and the UK and has been the recipient of numerous awards and bursaries, most recently being shortlisted for the S+T+ARTS AQUA MOTION Residency Award.
web : www.annamariesavage.com
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/anna_marie_savage/?hl=en
1 - Could you explain your practice?
I am a visual artist, predominately a painter, working at the intersection of art and science, using microscopy and water testing to explore hidden ecosystems. My practice involves collecting water samples from natural sources and analysing them under magnification, revealing microbial life and invisible contaminants. These findings become the basis for visual works, collages, paintings, and more recently, painting installations, that evoke both scientific clarity and poetic interpretation.
My latest body of work, Uisce Salach (Dirty Water) and Dríodar (Sediment), addresses the alarming environmental impact of the illegal dumping of illicit fuels, particularly in the local rivers along the Irish border. I am currently collaborating with Leeds University on a project that investigates the impact of illicit fuels on the environment along the Mexican and Irish borders and over the past year I have collected samples of polluted water from the River Fane, Co. Louth and have visually translated them into a cohesive body of work.
2 - Is art relevant today?
Art is absolutely relevant today, art will always be relevant, but I think more now than ever as we live in a world where there are so many atrocities happening. For me as an environmental artist, it offers a way to confront the climate crisis and make visible what often goes unseen whether that’s hidden ecosystems, fragile species, or the impact of human activity. Where science gives us data, art gives us meaning, emotion, and connection. It opens up conversations and reminds us that care for the environment is not just a scientific or political issue, but a deeply human one.
3 – We are always asked what other artists influence us; we want to know what art you don’t like and which influences you?
As an abstract, gestural painter, I guess the art that doesn’t really ‘do’ it for me is photo realism. I really admire the time and the planning that it must have taken the artist to do it but I find it a bit too boring and non-expressive. I like to see a painting where the painter has moved their hand, how they made the brushstrokes-painted over them, scraped back into them, to reveal an underlayer…and always a meaning, a narrative behind the work. I really like a lot of the older Irish artists like W.B Yeats, Patrick Collins, Barry Cooke and recently as I delve into 3D within my own painting practice, I have become very interested in the work by the artist, Richard Tuttle and how he combines elements of drawing, painting and sculpture and how his work manages to defy characterisation as one or the other.
What also really influences me today are the painters that I see and connect with on Instagram. What I love about this platform is that you get to connect with artists from all over the world, see their progression, their finished work and hear about why and what channels their practice!!! I love it!!!
4- If you could go back 10-20 years, what would you tell your younger self?
I am a great believer in that all things happen for a reason and that saying, ‘to learn to succeed, you must first learn to fail’, definitely runs true so I don’t think I would have made any different choices as such, as you definitely learn from them. However, I do believe and I only know that now, that I need to dedicate 100% to my practice and I would say to my younger self, try and make enough money to live on or to find a way that you don’t have to have a 9-5 job so you can work as a painter full time. I wish I could have made that big jump sooner as I only left my job three years ago to concentrate on my painting full time and the difference that it has made it just amazing!!!
5 – If you could go forward 10-20 years, what do you hope to have done or not done?
Funny, an old school friend asked me just recently, where did I see myself and my painting in years down the line and I said- I just want to be famous!!! She was a bit shocked and said, so you want people to come up to you in the street and recognise you??? And I said, no- I want them to recognise the work!!! Ever since I went to university, I always said that I wanted to get my work out there so that it was accessible to everyone and every year I set myself a goal, of getting it shown in this particular town, this particular city and now I am on – this particular country!!! So, going forward 10-20 years, I hope to have had solo shows in some of the top galleries throughout the world, to have my work hanging on walls in houses throughout the world and one of the biggest wants is to have a massive studio with windows, a plant and a settee!!! Then I will know that I have made it…
