On April 26th and 27th, from 1 to 6 pm, artists in DUMBO will open their doors to the public as part of DUMBO Open Studios, offering a rare look inside the art studios along the Brooklyn waterfront. Since the 1970s, DUMBO has been shaped by its vibrant art community. This interview series highlights a handful of participating artists in 2025. Each response offers a glimpse of what’s waiting behind the studio door.
Anne Neely has been in DUMBO since November 2024 as part of the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program at 20 Jay Street, #720.
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What will we see in your studio?
When you walk into my studio, the first thing you notice is an openness. Then you’ll notice the walls because there is movement coming from the colors and forms in the paintings.
At first sight, the paintings seem to emerge from the immense beauty of nature but there is something else haunting about them too. Beauty and foreboding live in equal measure in my work because I have always felt that the tension between things is the life force scratching at each other. In these times we live in, nature is under siege, and this ignites my imagination and sets my ideas colliding so much so that the sensory act of painting becomes interchangeable with its subject. Art is transformative.
In fact, you will see that my work has summoned up images of turbulence and explosions where white light forms burst forth over land and sea. Then, in other paintings, landscapes exist as horizons hidden amidst colored brushstrokes, ribbon-like, stretching vertically over the canvases. These “veil-like” structures evoke a world that is uncertain and unfolding. The landscapes are barely seen, but farther in the distance, there is a vastness that we yearn for. Even as my small brush fashions the crevasses into miniature landscapes, you might even think you recognize a place.
Small paintings of bridges also appear in my studio because I am here in Brooklyn, looking at the suspension bridges surrounding me. Their presence, like Matisse’s women, stretches out with many curves reclining, momentarily frozen into simplified finite forms.
For the last twenty-five years, I have been painting issues dealing with climate change because it seemed like a productive way to give awareness to our planet. This year is different. After I received the call from Sharpe Walentas granting me a studio, I received another call telling me I had ovarian cancer. The tumor immediately took shape in my imagination, and even as the surgeries commenced, I knew my art would change too. Arriving in November, I began to explore what it would be.
About the artist: Anne Neely is an artist who divides her time between Boston, Massachusetts and Jonesport, Maine. She was a Painting finalist for the Prix de Rome and twice finalist for the MASS Cultural Council Fellowship. Her work has been shown in galleries (Lohin/Geduld, NYC) and museums in New York City, New England, the West Coast and Ireland. Since 2000 her work has focused on Climate Change and in 2014, she had a solo exhibition, Water Stories, at the Museum of Science, Boston. Neely’s work is in the collections of The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, Grunwald Center for Graphic Arts, UCLA, CA, McNay Museum, San Antonio, TX, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, MA, The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, The Whitney Museum NY, NY and has been reviewed in Art in America, ArtNews, Boston Globe, Irish Times, New York Times. @neely_painter
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Anne Neely, 20 Jay Street, #720 Anne Neely Dumbo Open Studios 2025
@art_dumbo @SWstudioprogram