Ann Kipling is a Canadian artist who creates impressionistic portraits and landscapes on paper from direct observation. Kipling's distinctive style of overlapping, temporally suggestive linework is formed through her working process, which involves drawing her subject over time, recording subtle shifts in movement in the sitter or landscape during that period. Her work is characterized by a flat sense of space, where lines are used to frame a vibrating and gestural idea of her subject, rather than a direct representation of form. While not directly connected to any art movement in particular, connections can be made to Chinese landscape painters and the watercolours of Paul Cézanne. Using colour minimally, her primary media is etching, drawing, watercolours, pen, pencil, pastels and pencil crayons. She lives and works in Falkland, BC, a location which serves as a focus for her recent landscapes.
Early life and education
From 1955-60 Kipling studied at the Vancouver School of Art. She studied with Jan Zack, Herbert Siebner, and Rudy Kovak before gaining her footing as an artist in the 1960s-70s, most notably with her first solo show at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1971. In the 1960s she moved to the Lynn Valley where she lived and worked for a number of years. During this period her interest in depictions of natural phenomenon grew, and she began developing her individual style which involved working in extended sessions for her plein air landscapes and sittings with models for portraiture.
Later Work
Kipling has described her practice as follows, "When I am drawing from the figure or the landscape, I am fascinated by the change, movement, energy and transformation of form in a seemingly static situation". She has shown regularly in group and solo shows in Canada from the 1970s to the present day. In 2009 she made 141 drawings, mostly of the mountains around Falkland, BC, which were the focus of her 2011 exhibition at the , The Solitudes of Place: Recent Drawings by Ann Kipling. Her common tools of the trade are a drawing board, graphite, coloured pencils, pens and BFK Rives paper. Her works are commonly titled based on the day they are made, rather than the location, creating a sense of chronological unfolding or journaling in her oeuvre. She has works in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada, The Burnaby Art Gallery and in private and public collections across the nation. In 2004 she was the recipient of the Audain Prize. In 2017 her work was included in the exhibition, The Ornament of a House: Fifty Years of Collecting at the Burnaby Art Gallery
Personal life
In 1961 Kipling married the Canadian sculptor Leonard Epp. She has lived in Sunshine Falls, BC and Falkland, BC. She is a dedicated Tai Chi and yoga practitioner.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
Kipling has had many solo exhibitions, among them the following:
2014 Ann Kipling: The Falkland Drawings: a thirty-five-year survey, Kelowna Art Gallery
2011 The Solitudes of Place: Recent Drawings by Ann Kipling, Burnaby Art Gallery, Burnaby, BC
2000 Ann Kipling: Prints, Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, BC
Ann Kipling: Prints & Drawings, Vernon Art Gallery, Vernon, BC
Ann Kipling: Prints, 1958-67, Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, BC
1995 Ann Kipling, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver
1991 Three Decades: Ann Kipling, Vernon Art Gallery, Vernon, BC
