A Life List in Serigraphy
Friday, February 25 2000
Published on AllBusiness.com
In Anne Senechal Faust's vibrant serigraphs of the natural world, red-billed oxpeckers perch on the backs of zebras in Africa; macaws with dusty golden heads and wings of blue, teal, and reddish-brown fly through the morning mist above the Tambopata River in Peru; and a brilliant opal-crowned tanager sparkles amid the upper limbs of an emergent tree on a tributary of the Amazon River in Ecuador. When it comes to artwork, Faust is a stickler for realism. "I've been into these environments and I want to get the feeling across," she says. "I want to create an image that looks and feels like the place, so if the birds are flying through fog, I want the print to look like fog. If it's a brilliant sunny day, I want the print to reflect the way sunlight glints off a bird's exotic plumage."
Representing birds as they appear in their natural habitat is a vital undertaking for Faust, a devoted bird-watcher who has traveled to all seven continents gathering images for a special kind of life list. She has ceased keeping the conventional log of birds seen and has instead begun an inventory of the birds she would some day like to depict in screen print. "There are lots of life lists: people keep lists of birds viewed in North America or of birds seen in their states and cities. A lot of people travel on birding tours all over the world keeping catalogs of birds spotted. What I'm doing is different because I come home with pictures," says Faust, who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on the southern end of the Mississippi flyway.
The printmaker's skill at re-creating wildlife environments in screen print has resulted in numerous awards, honors, and collections, including her selection in 1999 as the master wildlife artist for the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum's "Birds in Art" exhibit in Wausau, Wisconsin. Faust's original serigraphs have been selected for the "Birds in Art" show 16 times over the past 19 years. Her solo exhibition, "The Art of Prints and Printmaking," was held at the Zigler Museum in Jennings, Louisiana, in 1997; and her work was featured in the Bell Museum of Natural History's "Wildlife Art in America" show in Minneapolis in 1994. Faust's prints have been included in the Society of Animal Artists' "Art and the Animal" exhibition the past six years, and she has won numerous grand prizes and purchase awards in juried competitions. Collections include the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and the Massachusetts Audubon Society, both located in Lincoln, Massachusetts, the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut, and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum.
With a mind discerning enough to spot quick-moving birds—such as the bohemian waxwings depicted perching on a tree trunk the same color as their plumage on a gray day in Les Bohémes—Faust might be expected to grow weary of printing the same few shapes in a single color over and over as
Representing birds as they appear in their natural habitat is a vital undertaking for Faust, a devoted bird-watcher who has traveled to all seven continents gathering images for a special kind of life list. She has ceased keeping the conventional log of birds seen and has instead begun an inventory of the birds she would some day like to depict in screen print. "There are lots of life lists: people keep lists of birds viewed in North America or of birds seen in their states and cities. A lot of people travel on birding tours all over the world keeping catalogs of birds spotted. What I'm doing is different because I come home with pictures," says Faust, who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on the southern end of the Mississippi flyway.
The printmaker's skill at re-creating wildlife environments in screen print has resulted in numerous awards, honors, and collections, including her selection in 1999 as the master wildlife artist for the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum's "Birds in Art" exhibit in Wausau, Wisconsin. Faust's original serigraphs have been selected for the "Birds in Art" show 16 times over the past 19 years. Her solo exhibition, "The Art of Prints and Printmaking," was held at the Zigler Museum in Jennings, Louisiana, in 1997; and her work was featured in the Bell Museum of Natural History's "Wildlife Art in America" show in Minneapolis in 1994. Faust's prints have been included in the Society of Animal Artists' "Art and the Animal" exhibition the past six years, and she has won numerous grand prizes and purchase awards in juried competitions. Collections include the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park and the Massachusetts Audubon Society, both located in Lincoln, Massachusetts, the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut, and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum.
With a mind discerning enough to spot quick-moving birds—such as the bohemian waxwings depicted perching on a tree trunk the same color as their plumage on a gray day in Les Bohémes—Faust might be expected to grow weary of printing the same few shapes in a single color over and over as
