About Ann

The life of Ann Sayre Wiseman, in her own words.

"I discovered the delirious joy of painting at the age of three at the City and Country School in Greenwich Village New York City where we were allowed to paint as many pictures as we wished mixing colors and dripping them down the page without the reminder that we were "wasting paper." Later I discovered I could tell stories with pictures and made endless designs and numerous family story books. I began to think I was pretty good at Art and became president of every art club in all my schools. Art was my path to freedom, originality, lawlessness, and uncharted creativity. Socially artists were given licence to be different, step outside the rules, travel, and enjoy libertine celebrations of life and the wonders of nature. At 13 in the Greenwich House Life Classes, I learned about the fascinating secrets of the human body kept from children. At the Art Students League, I learned about composition with John Sloan, anatomy with Bob Hale, and quick drawing on the spot with John Groth. In Paris I learned about more freedoms; Braque, Picasso, Matisse, Bonnard and how to express what I felt about what I saw, and loved. In Robinhood Maine, Margurite Zorach taught me how to file a ten penny nail into a rug hook and there I made hundreds of hooked rugs while my babies preempted my painting career. In Florence, Italy I expanded my hooked rugs into hooked Tapestries and created many commissions for Art collectors like A. P. Morgan, A. Sidemon-Eristoff, Lord Perth of London. While raising my two sons in Princeton, NJ, I built 50 Kinetic Sandfountains (Glass boxes with sand moving through objects, set in a brass ring that rolled on ball bearings or by motor, some of which are in the Art Collections of Hirshhorn, David Rockefeller and the Chase Manhattan Bank NYC. For many years I supported my children by teaching Art, Crafts and conducted teacher-training workshops helping people access their creativity in many kinds of mediums including found materials, Bread Sculpture and the Fiber Arts. As Program Director at The Boston Children's Museum, in it's early days in Jamaica Plain, I designed programs that allowed hundreds of visitors and teachers to experiment with hands-on paper making, loom building, the fiber crafts, kites, and anything that could be made by hand. For 15 years at Lesley College in Cambridge, I moved creativity into the Expressive Therapies field, got an MA. and became an Art and Dream Therapist training Graduate Students until my sons were finished with college when I returned to painting and drawing. At Henry Henches Cape School of Art in Provincetown, I began to understand the mysteries of painting the effects of light on colored surfaces and fell in love with the charming structures, compositions and sand flats of Provincetown where I have spent many summers since I was seventeen. I illustrate all my books and lectures, exhibit my paintings and drawings occasionally and continue to paint the things that interest my eye and move my feelings here and in Mexico in the winter. For fun I created the Thousand Clothespin Balancing Circus Of Endangered Species which has traveled from Provincetown to the DeCordova Museum; Toys Made by Artists Exhibit, and The Montshire Science Museum in Vermont. Over the years I have written and illustrated 10 activity books, 3 children's books 2 books on exploring your dreams and 5 travel sketchbooks. This spring I am teaching acrylic painting, café sketching and running a workshop called "What To Do With The Rest Of Your Life" at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. Personal Enrichment workshops and private sessions"

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