Artist's Bio

Grounded in her experience of seeing, Anne explores the challenge of new artistic approaches and materials. Currently she is working on the idea of wood and the enduring mass of the mountains. She has completed a series of colored pencil drawings on black paper where the weave of color marks play off the paper. When the lamp light hits the black surface, the color interaction happens in the viewer’s eye. It is about the interaction rather than the description.

In 1950 Anne was born in Oakland, California. She grew up as the daughter of a submarine skipper who served in the Cold War. Her environment was constantly changing as her family moved through out the United States. Each new environment's light remained embedded in her memory. The power of the sea and its immutable dominance shaped her imagination.

In the early 1980's, at UNC-Greensboro, her MFA graduate work stressed the structural approach to drawing. As an Associate Professor of Art at the University of North Georgia's Gainesville Campus and as a Professor of Art at Savannah College of Art and Design, she researched contemporary theories of art. Through out these competing theories, Anne maintained a practice of drawing the figure and the environment from observation. She is know for her work drawing and teaching the nude.

As a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Anne was awarded the Howard Art Scholarship and won the prestigious Chancellor Purchase Award. Her winning drawing became part of the Weatherspoon Art Museum permanent collection.

As the Director of the R.C. Moore Gallery at the University of North Georgia's Gainesville Campus for 7 years, Anne curated 6 exhibits per year. The following exhibits highlight her excellent program. "African Hand: African Art Collection of Bert and Edith Carpenter" was a premier collection that was insured for a half a million dollars. "The Collaborative Art: Costume, Stage Set, and Lighting Design" featured the costumes, stage set designs with models, narrative plans and lighting plans from Gainesville Theater Alliance's productions. "Surfaces and Connections: American Crafts in the South" was a collaborative craft exhibits with Quinlan Visual Art Center & Brenau University Gallery. Anne curated R.C. Moore Gallery's exhibit of metals, weaving and basketry.

Anne was awarded prestigious travel grants. In 1990 she was received a Fulbright Hayes Group Travel Grant for 5 weeks in India. In 1998 she received $4,000 grant to travel in Italy. In 2016 she was awarded a $7,000 Sabbatical Grant from Savannah College of Art and Design.

Anne was an artist-in-resident at University of Georgia's Cortona, Italy program, at Ossawbaw Island, at Hospitalfield Centre For The Arts & Culture, Arbroath, Scotland and in at c.r.e.t.a., Rome, Italy. Work from these residencies was shown in later exhibits.

In 1989, Anne's work in the group exhibit "Perceptions of Five" at the Dana Art Gallery Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, Georgia was reviewed in "Art Papers" by Mark Kingsley in the July/August 1990 issue, Vol. 14, number 4, pages 54-55.

In 2002 Anne's work was exhibited internationally in Finland in a group exchange show. Two of her large diptych drawings were exhibited at Imatra Taidemuseo in Imatra Kulttuurikeskus located Imatra, Finland and Kouvolan Taidemuseo, located in Kouvola, Finland. Her drawing was selected by the Finnish as the advertising image for these exhibits.

In 2016 Anne's drawings were exhibited in a three person show in Rome, Italy at c.r.e.t.a.'s Gallery as part of her 10 weeks artist in residency.

In 2019-20 Anne organized an exhibit, "The Contemporary Female Gaze: Diverse, Anne Bessac, Melisa Cadel & Angela Cunningham". Each artist's work addressed the human figure from a different visual strategy. The exhibit was reviewed by Martin Mugar in the essay, "Three Artists and Their Mediums", and published on "The Woven Tale Press", the web’s premier online literary and fine art magazine. (https://www.thewoventalepress.net/2021/02/17/the-feminine-gaze/). Connie Bostic also wrote a review that was published by Black Mountain Press of Flood Gallery Fine Art literary magazine.

Currently Anne lives in North Carolina's mountains that is the home of an active community of entrepreneur artists. She is a participating member of the biannual Toe River Arts Studio Tour. She is a member of the Asheville Printmakers and actively exhibits with them in group shows.