I LOVE East Village

Anne Finkelstein is a native New Yorker who paints and photographs images of architecture in New York City and places she travels. She received a BA in painting from Bard College and an MFA in painting from Hunter College. Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows throughout the United States, most recently at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. She has an upcoming solo exhibition at the FX Fowle Gallery in New York. Her work is included in several corporate collections, including the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York, and The David Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh.

She is the founder of AJ&J Design, a graphic design company, and teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons, The New School for Design. She lives in Chelsea with her husband, artist James Acevedo, and their daughter Joanna.

Artist Statement

I started photographing the High Line when it opened during the summer of 2009. I felt an instant affinity for the High Line because it does what I do in my artwork. It shows us how to see the city from a different viewpoint.

At first I just took lots of pictures. Gradually I began sorting them into themes, which became the basis for this series. The first composition, Blu, established the format. Using a vertical format to portray such an expressly horizontal subject gives me the ability to play with the tension between depth and flatness. When I start a new composition I take all my photos of a theme and throw them into a new file in a digital editing program. Then I start to find connections between the images and weave them into a seamless whole. I manipulate the images to extend them beyond their original boundaries and eliminate elements which interrupt the visual flow. The result is a portrait of one place from many viewpoints simultaneously.

The paintings in the series, View One, View Two and View Three are based on single photographic images and they have a different goal. I wanted to capture a sweeping sense of scale on a small surface—a look deep into the horizon. The last painting, View Four,  does not show a deep space, but focuses on the gritty texture of a building which is under construction near the 20th Street entrance to the High Line. I think a lot about the different qualities of digital and traditional media. Some of my digital compositions are studies for paintings. Other are final artworks.

Growing up in New York City, some of my earliest visual memories were of very large buildings. When you are in Manhattan you know there is a horizon out there somewhere, but you can’t see it. My work is a visual journey through obstacles; a metaphor for experiences through time.

-Anne Finkelstein