Biography
Annie Varnot is a contemporary painter based in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, whose work moves between abstraction and representation. Drawing from an intimate and sustained relationship with the landscape, her paintings combine gestural mark-making, saturated color, pattern, and flattened, constructed space. The natural world remains recognizable but unstable—observed forms are fragmented, exaggerated, and reorganized through memory and the act of painting.
Varnot’s relationship to landscape has been shaped by extensive periods of immersion in remote environments. She hiked the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail in 2017 and the 3,100-mile Continental Divide Trail in 2019, experiences that fundamentally shifted her studio practice and ultimately contributed to her move from New York to New Mexico.
Varnot received an MFA in Painting from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a BS in Studio Art from Skidmore College. She is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and has participated in artist residencies throughout the United States and internationally, including Weir Farm, Montello Foundation, La Napoule Art Foundation, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and MASS MoCA’s Assets for Artists program. Her work has been exhibited at Wave Hill, Smack Mellon, University Galleries of Illinois State University, and other venues nationally.
