Seated Woman In Stripes
Ann KiernanAnn Kiernan builds her portraits upon the discarded fragments of history, layering opaque color over found technical documents. This self-portrait places a striped figure atop the foreword of a 1941 architectural book, merging the softness of the human form with the precise lines of Berlin’s past.
Seated Woman In Stripes
Ann Kiernan builds her portraits upon the discarded fragments of history, layering opaque color over found technical documents. This self-portrait places a striped figure atop the foreword of a 1941 architectural book, merging the softness of the human form with the precise lines of Berlin’s past.
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Art Analysis
A personal history painted over Berlin's building plans
This piece marks the beginning of a series painted on Das Grunddrisswerk, an old book of building plans Kiernan discovered on a Berlin street. Using gouache, she works directly onto the 1941 foreword page, allowing the original German text and the patina of the paper to influence the final image. The result is a portrait that feels physically rooted in the history of the city, where the individual is inseparable from the environment they inhabit.
The contrast between the bold stripes of the woman’s clothing and the delicate, aged typography of the book creates a compelling visual tension. By repurposing a document of structural design for a personal study, Kiernan explores how identity occupies the spaces left behind by history. It is an intimate reclamation of a found object, turning a rigid plan into a site of quiet, personal reflection.
The artist utilizes the foreword of a 1941 architectural book found in Berlin as the primary support for her gouache painting.
This work serves as a personal introduction to the artist's series, capturing her likeness as the first entry in a reclaimed volume.
The artist uses monochrome tones to emphasize the sharp lines and heavy textures of the European architecture.
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