Anna Kocher - EKPHRASIS
Meet Artist, Anna Kocher
Anna Kocher is a painter, poet, mother, teacher, and frequently melancholic yearner. Her study of art has led her from Philadelphia to Italy and beyond. She has exhibited work in many venues throughout the region, and has created countless commissions for private collections and murals for public enjoyment. She works in a variety of media, but oil paint is her primary focus. Her style can be described as expressive realism, owing equal debt to her influences of Abstract and German Expressionism and American Realism, but her subject matter reflects her own unique gaze and the ambiguously dynamic era in which she came of age.
Opening Reception, First Friday, 6/6/2025, 5:00-7:00 pm
Gallery Hours:
Opening Reception: First Friday, 6/6/2025, 5:00-7:00 pm
Gallery Hours: Sunday, 6/8/2025, 4:00-6:00 pm
Gallery Hours: Saturday, 6/14/2025, 4:00-8:00
Gallery Hours and Poetry Sharing: Sunday, 6/22/2025, 4:00-6:00
Closing Reception: Saturday, 6/28/2025, 4:00-7:00
To purchase from the exhibit please contact Anna directly.
Instagram: @annakocherart
www.annakocher.com
AnnaLKocher@gmail.com
Artist Statement: EKPHRASIS
Brush and pen; a conversation
These paintings are an exploration of memory and longing. Lines dissolve between past and future, real and imagined, remembered and hoped for. Colors glow with yearning.
I incorporate images from dreams, memories, old photos and ephemera and the visions these things evoke. The media and application themselves reinforce the theme with broken marks on a fragile surface; fragments of words and marks, sometimes harmonizing, sometimes discordant, always searching for revelation and connection between dissonant states. The partial, incomplete nature of the images echoes the fragmented quality of memory itself.
This show elaborates on the themes of memory and longing by delving more deeply into the intimate connection between words and imagery in my work. I have always written poetry, and for many years, bits of poems have found their way into my paintings. I recently became interested in the idea of ekphrasis, which is, simply put, a literary description of a work of art. I began to
visualize my words and images as being in conversation with each other, weaving together and overlapping to form new meaning. This work gives breath to that conversation.
