Annie Varnot

Inaugural Artist in Residence, Spring 2018

Alumni Artist in Residence, Winter 2020

Annie Varnot is a painter and sculptor living in Brooklyn, New York, with experience in a variety of mediums. Her sculptures often deal with both personal and environmental trauma, and have included just about anything – from chicken eggs to repurposed drinking straws.

When Varnot came to Oak Spring, she focused on non-traditional landscape painting. Fresh off of a five-month expedition on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), Varnot sought to create art that was as vibrant, daring, and challenging as her experience. Varnot’s PCT paintings have an innate sense of place on the West Coast, but part of her art also involved Oak Spring. Stencils used in her painting process made their way into another project after use: Varnot arranged her stencils on the windows of the studio––another way in which her creativity worked to interact with the outside. 

In 2020, Annie returned to Oak Spring as an alumni artist in residence, where her work included creating paintings and paper cut-outs influenced by Oak Spring’s landscapes.

See more of Annie Varnot’s work here. To read our blogpost about our inaugural artists in residence program, click here.