Bio
My artwork is a series of experiments
My artwork is layered
My artwork is research based
My artwork is full of color
My artwork glides across disciplines
My artwork is driven by wordplay
My artwork is this poem
Art is hunting & gathering
I make large-scale paintings to explore how memory breaks down over time. I find inspiration everywhere, in fiction, nature, thrift stores, packaging, and the news. Experimenting with mark-making and finding new ways in which aesthetics and the natural environment are fundamentally interwoven is a constant theme of my work. I draw from the language of abstraction, color theory, and the abstract expressionist movement to create works that are an unrestrained layering of patterns on patterns created and sanded back.
My work is a process-driven practice rooted in an exploration of material and language. The process is a fist fight, a war zone, a push-and-pull of ideas. I work with the element of chance, intertwined with research, memory, language, and play. I build layers, sand back, paint over, draw, hide things. The process is an embodiment of the struggle with the messiness of life, the constant need to correct “mistakes.” The work can start to look like it’s falling apart, and I find ways to bring it together through color, pattern, repetition, reassembly, humility, humor, and the buildup of accidental shapes and textures.
Annemarie Waugh (American, b. United Kingdom) is a visual artist, curator, and educator.
Annemarie is working within the intersections of painting and social practice installation exploring memory, the environment, and human connection. Many of her projects invite participation from the audience, allowing the work to unfold through shared experiences. She has lived and worked internationally, with projects spanning Europe, Asia, and the United States.
Annemarie received her BA (Hons) from Central St Martins, UAL, London. She received her MFA from Stony Brook University. She was awarded a teaching Fellowship and received the Stephanie Dinkins Yayoi Kusama award for her performance, The Developer’s Midnight Fantasy (2021) and the Princes Trust Artist Award for Excellence in Painting, London.
She was awarded a Huntington Arts Grant in (2025) for her installation Bitterest Sweet. Her work has been shown at The Lyceum Gallery, The Long Island Museum, Orchard Street Gallery, NYC, Front Street Gallery, Brooklyn, Christie’s, London, MoCA LI Patchogue, The Islip Museum, Serendip Gallery, Kobe, Japan, Artist Films Berlin, among many others. Annemarie curates The Lyceum Gallery at Suffolk Community College.
My artwork is layered
My artwork is research based
My artwork is full of color
My artwork glides across disciplines
My artwork is driven by wordplay
My artwork is this poem
Art is hunting & gathering
I make large-scale paintings to explore how memory breaks down over time. I find inspiration everywhere, in fiction, nature, thrift stores, packaging, and the news. Experimenting with mark-making and finding new ways in which aesthetics and the natural environment are fundamentally interwoven is a constant theme of my work. I draw from the language of abstraction, color theory, and the abstract expressionist movement to create works that are an unrestrained layering of patterns on patterns created and sanded back.
My work is a process-driven practice rooted in an exploration of material and language. The process is a fist fight, a war zone, a push-and-pull of ideas. I work with the element of chance, intertwined with research, memory, language, and play. I build layers, sand back, paint over, draw, hide things. The process is an embodiment of the struggle with the messiness of life, the constant need to correct “mistakes.” The work can start to look like it’s falling apart, and I find ways to bring it together through color, pattern, repetition, reassembly, humility, humor, and the buildup of accidental shapes and textures.
Annemarie Waugh (American, b. United Kingdom) is a visual artist, curator, and educator.
Annemarie is working within the intersections of painting and social practice installation exploring memory, the environment, and human connection. Many of her projects invite participation from the audience, allowing the work to unfold through shared experiences. She has lived and worked internationally, with projects spanning Europe, Asia, and the United States.
Annemarie received her BA (Hons) from Central St Martins, UAL, London. She received her MFA from Stony Brook University. She was awarded a teaching Fellowship and received the Stephanie Dinkins Yayoi Kusama award for her performance, The Developer’s Midnight Fantasy (2021) and the Princes Trust Artist Award for Excellence in Painting, London.
She was awarded a Huntington Arts Grant in (2025) for her installation Bitterest Sweet. Her work has been shown at The Lyceum Gallery, The Long Island Museum, Orchard Street Gallery, NYC, Front Street Gallery, Brooklyn, Christie’s, London, MoCA LI Patchogue, The Islip Museum, Serendip Gallery, Kobe, Japan, Artist Films Berlin, among many others. Annemarie curates The Lyceum Gallery at Suffolk Community College.
Education
BA (Hons) Central Saint Martins
MFA Stony Brook University
MFA Stony Brook University
Solo Shows
2025
Across the Pond
The Lyceum Gallery
Riverhead, NY
2021
CANvas Food drive
Lawrence Alloway Gallery
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY
2021
#Shucked
Lawrence Alloway Gallery
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY
2013
Hanging on a Thread
Farmer’s Market Gallery
Eastend Arts
Riverhead, NY
Across the Pond
The Lyceum Gallery
Riverhead, NY
2021
CANvas Food drive
Lawrence Alloway Gallery
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY
2021
#Shucked
Lawrence Alloway Gallery
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, NY
2013
Hanging on a Thread
Farmer’s Market Gallery
Eastend Arts
Riverhead, NY
Selected Group Exhibitions
2026
Growing America
North Fork Contemporary, NY
2025
Bitterest Sweet
Sylvester Manor
Shelter Island, NY
2025
Contemporary Art Now, Hale Gallery
Farmingdale State College
2024
Into the Spines
LI MOCA, Patchogue, NY
2023
Suffolk County Community College
Faculty Art Exhibition, Riverhead, NY
2022
Tell Me More About Yourself
Gallery Afferro, NJ
2021
Four
Zuccaire gallery, NY
2019
The Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, NY
Painters painting Painters
2019
LOL – Laugh Out Loud
MoCA L.I, Patchogue, NY
2013
Remembering Things Past
The Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY
Growing America
North Fork Contemporary, NY
2025
Bitterest Sweet
Sylvester Manor
Shelter Island, NY
2025
Contemporary Art Now, Hale Gallery
Farmingdale State College
2024
Into the Spines
LI MOCA, Patchogue, NY
2023
Suffolk County Community College
Faculty Art Exhibition, Riverhead, NY
2022
Tell Me More About Yourself
Gallery Afferro, NJ
2021
Four
Zuccaire gallery, NY
2019
The Long Island Museum, Stony Brook, NY
Painters painting Painters
2019
LOL – Laugh Out Loud
MoCA L.I, Patchogue, NY
2013
Remembering Things Past
The Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY
MISS-INFORMATION
Artspeak
Press
Artspeak
Mix & Match:
Press
Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness [interrogate fractured temporalities]
After Harryette Mullen
with Elise Armani
A. abstraction, aesthetics, allegory, anatomy, anthropocene, anthropomorphic, archetype, armature, artifice, artifacts, assemblage, avant-garde, authenticity, axiom, axiomatic B. Baroque, Bauhaus, biomorphic, bourgeois, Byzantine C. calligraphy, carapace, canon, caricature, carotenoid, chiaroscuro, circularity, coexist, collage, commodification, composition, conceptual, contemporaneous, contrapposto, critique, cubism D. decadence, denote, degradations, denude, denominator, delineates, dialogical, detrimental, disjunction, dislocations, discern, destabilizing, discourse, dissensus E. ecofemminist, efface, ekphrastic, endogenous, enlightenment, elucidate, equipoise, etymology, expressionism, euphemistically, exigencies F. fabricate, facilitate, fecundity, figurability, formalism, fundamental, futurity G. geologically, genealogy, genre, gestalt, generative, gestural, gothic H. heuristic, hierarchy, hucksterism, hyperobjects I. Iconography, impressionism, inchoate, inculcate, ineradicable, inimical, immutability, incomprehensible, interrogate, iconoclasm, installations, interdisciplinary, interlocutor, interiority, inviolable J. jouissance, justan, juxtaposition K. Kairo, kitsch L. lacunae, liminalities, litigiousness, liturgical, luminosity M. materiality, medieval, memento mori, metaphorically, mimesis, minimalism, misology, misreading, modernism, monochrome, mutability, multifaceted N. nachleben, nachträglichkeit, neoclassicism, neologism, nonsensical, neutrality O. obdurate, oeuvre, oneiric, ontic, ontology, ontological, op art, organon, Orientalism, overemphasize P. paean, palpability, paradigmatic, paradigm, paradoxical, parergon, patriarchy, pastiching, pensée, percipient, pernicious, phenomenological, philological, physicality, plethora, philology, poiesis, polyphony, polis, pop art, pointillism, post-impressionism, preliminaries, propitious, prorogate, proselytism, protean, proliferated Q. quadratura, quatrefoil, Quattrocento, R. rapprochement, realism, recrudescence, recalcitrant, recitation, reconsolidation, reenactment, reification, reterritorialization, reciprocity, reformulated, recontextualizes, rhetoric, rococo, romanticism S. sanguinary, schema, schism, semiotic, seriality, sesquipedalian, sfumato, sinewy, social realism, somatic, somnambulism, solipsism, specialism, subjectivity, surrealism, symbolism T. temerity, terminus, terminology, temporality, territorialization, transgression, transactional, transfigured, transmogrify, triptych, tutelage U. ubiquitous, unheimlich, utopia V. validation, vanitas, ventriloquize, vernacular, vestige, vicissitude, visibility W. wabi-sabi, WYSIWYG pronounced “wizzy-wig.” acronym for “what you see is what you get” X. xanthic, xerocopy, xylography Y. yasti Z. zeitgeist, zenga, zentangle
‘Chuffed to Bits’ Annemarie Waugh’s playful ode to memory, language, and Britishness
By Danielle King
We tell ourselves stories to make sense of our histories, personal or collective, real or imagined.In her solo exhibition “Across the Pond,” Annemarie Waugh tells us playful tales constructedfrom the fragments of her youth growing up in Britain. Her work is less about a recollection offacts than the texture of memory itself: elusive, fractured, and steeped in language and humor.
Nostalgia is undeniably at play here. There are familiar faces, like the animated character MrBenn (from the escapist British tv series of the same name), characters one might recognize fromevenings spent gathered around a television glowing in a dim living room. But Waugh graspsthat nostalgia is slippery terrain, riddled with irony and contradiction. Her canvases, somestretching to six feet, contain glimpses of tartans, foliage, pastries, playgrounds, and animalsintermingled with abstract gestures.
Such deliberate fragmentation feels apt. Memory seldom behaves neatly; it stutters, glitches, andcollides into fresh configurations, revealing stories more complicated and more compelling thanfacts ever could. The artist’s employment of data moshing - a digital technique that intentionallydistorts images - reflects the fragmented nature of memory itself. In her cut paper works, Waughaddresses the gaps in memory, the spaces where details fade or vanish. The careful yet childlikeact of cutting paper becomes an apt metaphor for the holes that punctuate our recollections.
Central to Waugh’s practice is language: colloquialisms from English, Irish, Welsh, Gaelic,Scottish, Cornish, and Yiddish are used as inspirations for and titles of many of the works in thisexhibition. It’s the slang of her childhood, overheard at the corner shop or on the British railplatform. Waugh’s use of language, like conceptual artist Barbara Kruger’s, is deliberate, butgentler. Where Kruger’s words provoke, Waugh’s wink. Expressions such as “Bob’s your uncle”or “It’s all swings and roundabouts” offer comfort rather than confrontation. Waugh previouslyscrawled British idioms in chalk on a large wall; ephemeral words soon erased. In “Across thePond,” these expressions become permanent, though their meanings remain fluid.
Waugh’s affection for “faffing around”- British slang for spending time idly, fiddling, dallying -is central to her artistic process. This spirit of tinkering and experimentation is evident throughout her work, allowing for discoveries that structured planning rarely permits.
In the Ancient Clan, Tartan paintings, Waugh reinterprets traditional Scottish tartan throughexaggerated brushstrokes and fluid lines, challenging the structured rigidity associated with clanpatterns. This irreverence toward heritage recalls fashion designer Vivienne Westwood’s punkreinventions of classic British motifs. Both artists understand tradition as something vulnerableand open to reinterpretation.
Another painting, Twee Bunny, exemplifies Waugh’s whimsical style. The rabbit, painted insimple, expressive lines reminiscent of a child’s drawing, conveys a lighthearted innocence.Abstract shapes, grids, and spontaneous paint gestures disrupt this scene, though, suggesting complexity beneath the surface. Here, as in classic British animations like Wallace and Gromit,humor moves slyly, working double-time to charm children and whisper clever asides to adults.
Annemarie Waugh’s Britain is both familiar and strange, a place defined by the simple pleasuresand pains of everyday life: clotted cream teas, jumble sales, Victorian seaside piers, and ever-present rain. Her work reminds us that memory, identity, and language are interpretative acts. In“Across the Pond,” Waugh crafts a narrative less about the Britain that was and more about theBritain we imagine - elusive and comforting, forever receding just beyond our grasp.
36 Hours on the East End: Things to Do and See
The New York Times,
by Add
2025
Action-spectacle
www.action-spectacle.com/summer-2024-part-iii/waugh
2024
Dictumst Tristique, Facilisis Magazine,
Edition Two, Porta Libero
2021
Auctor Adipiscing Art Magazine,
Porta Libero
2020
After Harryette Mullen
with Elise Armani
A. abstraction, aesthetics, allegory, anatomy, anthropocene, anthropomorphic, archetype, armature, artifice, artifacts, assemblage, avant-garde, authenticity, axiom, axiomatic B. Baroque, Bauhaus, biomorphic, bourgeois, Byzantine C. calligraphy, carapace, canon, caricature, carotenoid, chiaroscuro, circularity, coexist, collage, commodification, composition, conceptual, contemporaneous, contrapposto, critique, cubism D. decadence, denote, degradations, denude, denominator, delineates, dialogical, detrimental, disjunction, dislocations, discern, destabilizing, discourse, dissensus E. ecofemminist, efface, ekphrastic, endogenous, enlightenment, elucidate, equipoise, etymology, expressionism, euphemistically, exigencies F. fabricate, facilitate, fecundity, figurability, formalism, fundamental, futurity G. geologically, genealogy, genre, gestalt, generative, gestural, gothic H. heuristic, hierarchy, hucksterism, hyperobjects I. Iconography, impressionism, inchoate, inculcate, ineradicable, inimical, immutability, incomprehensible, interrogate, iconoclasm, installations, interdisciplinary, interlocutor, interiority, inviolable J. jouissance, justan, juxtaposition K. Kairo, kitsch L. lacunae, liminalities, litigiousness, liturgical, luminosity M. materiality, medieval, memento mori, metaphorically, mimesis, minimalism, misology, misreading, modernism, monochrome, mutability, multifaceted N. nachleben, nachträglichkeit, neoclassicism, neologism, nonsensical, neutrality O. obdurate, oeuvre, oneiric, ontic, ontology, ontological, op art, organon, Orientalism, overemphasize P. paean, palpability, paradigmatic, paradigm, paradoxical, parergon, patriarchy, pastiching, pensée, percipient, pernicious, phenomenological, philological, physicality, plethora, philology, poiesis, polyphony, polis, pop art, pointillism, post-impressionism, preliminaries, propitious, prorogate, proselytism, protean, proliferated Q. quadratura, quatrefoil, Quattrocento, R. rapprochement, realism, recrudescence, recalcitrant, recitation, reconsolidation, reenactment, reification, reterritorialization, reciprocity, reformulated, recontextualizes, rhetoric, rococo, romanticism S. sanguinary, schema, schism, semiotic, seriality, sesquipedalian, sfumato, sinewy, social realism, somatic, somnambulism, solipsism, specialism, subjectivity, surrealism, symbolism T. temerity, terminus, terminology, temporality, territorialization, transgression, transactional, transfigured, transmogrify, triptych, tutelage U. ubiquitous, unheimlich, utopia V. validation, vanitas, ventriloquize, vernacular, vestige, vicissitude, visibility W. wabi-sabi, WYSIWYG pronounced “wizzy-wig.” acronym for “what you see is what you get” X. xanthic, xerocopy, xylography Y. yasti Z. zeitgeist, zenga, zentangle
‘Chuffed to Bits’ Annemarie Waugh’s playful ode to memory, language, and Britishness
By Danielle King
We tell ourselves stories to make sense of our histories, personal or collective, real or imagined.In her solo exhibition “Across the Pond,” Annemarie Waugh tells us playful tales constructedfrom the fragments of her youth growing up in Britain. Her work is less about a recollection offacts than the texture of memory itself: elusive, fractured, and steeped in language and humor.
Nostalgia is undeniably at play here. There are familiar faces, like the animated character MrBenn (from the escapist British tv series of the same name), characters one might recognize fromevenings spent gathered around a television glowing in a dim living room. But Waugh graspsthat nostalgia is slippery terrain, riddled with irony and contradiction. Her canvases, somestretching to six feet, contain glimpses of tartans, foliage, pastries, playgrounds, and animalsintermingled with abstract gestures.
Such deliberate fragmentation feels apt. Memory seldom behaves neatly; it stutters, glitches, andcollides into fresh configurations, revealing stories more complicated and more compelling thanfacts ever could. The artist’s employment of data moshing - a digital technique that intentionallydistorts images - reflects the fragmented nature of memory itself. In her cut paper works, Waughaddresses the gaps in memory, the spaces where details fade or vanish. The careful yet childlikeact of cutting paper becomes an apt metaphor for the holes that punctuate our recollections.
Central to Waugh’s practice is language: colloquialisms from English, Irish, Welsh, Gaelic,Scottish, Cornish, and Yiddish are used as inspirations for and titles of many of the works in thisexhibition. It’s the slang of her childhood, overheard at the corner shop or on the British railplatform. Waugh’s use of language, like conceptual artist Barbara Kruger’s, is deliberate, butgentler. Where Kruger’s words provoke, Waugh’s wink. Expressions such as “Bob’s your uncle”or “It’s all swings and roundabouts” offer comfort rather than confrontation. Waugh previouslyscrawled British idioms in chalk on a large wall; ephemeral words soon erased. In “Across thePond,” these expressions become permanent, though their meanings remain fluid.
Waugh’s affection for “faffing around”- British slang for spending time idly, fiddling, dallying -is central to her artistic process. This spirit of tinkering and experimentation is evident throughout her work, allowing for discoveries that structured planning rarely permits.
In the Ancient Clan, Tartan paintings, Waugh reinterprets traditional Scottish tartan throughexaggerated brushstrokes and fluid lines, challenging the structured rigidity associated with clanpatterns. This irreverence toward heritage recalls fashion designer Vivienne Westwood’s punkreinventions of classic British motifs. Both artists understand tradition as something vulnerableand open to reinterpretation.
Another painting, Twee Bunny, exemplifies Waugh’s whimsical style. The rabbit, painted insimple, expressive lines reminiscent of a child’s drawing, conveys a lighthearted innocence.Abstract shapes, grids, and spontaneous paint gestures disrupt this scene, though, suggesting complexity beneath the surface. Here, as in classic British animations like Wallace and Gromit,humor moves slyly, working double-time to charm children and whisper clever asides to adults.
Annemarie Waugh’s Britain is both familiar and strange, a place defined by the simple pleasuresand pains of everyday life: clotted cream teas, jumble sales, Victorian seaside piers, and ever-present rain. Her work reminds us that memory, identity, and language are interpretative acts. In“Across the Pond,” Waugh crafts a narrative less about the Britain that was and more about theBritain we imagine - elusive and comforting, forever receding just beyond our grasp.
36 Hours on the East End: Things to Do and See
The New York Times,
by Add
2025
Action-spectacle
www.action-spectacle.com/summer-2024-part-iii/waugh
2024
Dictumst Tristique, Facilisis Magazine,
Edition Two, Porta Libero
2021
Auctor Adipiscing Art Magazine,
Porta Libero
2020