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ann tanksley

silk aquatint prints

These images were originally created as a part of a suite of black and white monoprints commissioned by the Links, Inc. and shown at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in 1992. The images in the series are based on selected writings of Zora Neale Hurston, a writer whose work had a deep impact on the artist. Tanksley describes the collaboration of ideas in this way:
 “She writes a script of boundless imagery, so alive and relevant that she feeds my imagination. I never run out of material to draw from. I have been tremendously enriched by her writings and I am grateful for having met her”.

The artist later made an edition of silk aquatint prints of the images. We are pleased to offer these three remaining artist’s proofs from the series.

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tanksley_muttsy_web
tanksley_daddy_had_a_big_lap_web

“Pinky Jones, a young girl from the South, seeks lodging at Ma Turner’s boarding house in Harlem. There she meets Muttsy, a gambler and a man-about-town, who takes a liking to her and does everything he can to win her over. Pinkie finally consents to the marriage with the promise that Muttsy will give up gambling”.

Muttsy, Zora Neale Hurston

Muttsy, 1995
Silk Aquatint A/P
14” x 11”
SOLD

“John Hurston, Zora’s father, was a preacher of a small church in the town of Eatonville, Florida where she was born. Although he was a good provider, much to Zora and her mother Lucy’s distress, he was known to visit other women”.

Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Zora Neale Hurston

Daddy Had a Big Lap, 1989
Silk Aquatint (A/P)
14” x 11”
SOLD
tanksley_struttin_web

“Fire was a quarterly ‘devoted to the young Negro artist’. It was primarily the creation of a group of energetic and talented people centered around Hurston, Hughes, and Thurman who enjoyed shocking the stuffy by calling themselves the ‘Niggerati’. They met frequently to talk literature and politics, to gossip and to party”.

Zora Neale Hurston, Robert Hemenway

Strutting, 1995
Silk Aquatint (A/P)
11” x 14”
SOLD

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