Today we’d like to introduce you to Ann Hammond Gift.
Hi Ann, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I remember playing with paper dolls when I was little. I was dressing the 10-inch-tall paper women in different outfits while watching Disney movies when I wanted to create my very own paper outfit like a Disney character. I spent the afternoon drawing patterns on construction paper, rolling, and cutting them to fit me into a dress. That was my first piece of artwork. My passion for art and fashion stemmed from there.
I took drawing as an art requirement back in high school, which was not my calling. If you saw my drawings from that year, you would not think it was the same artist. The following year I needed another art class and decided to take on painting. One of our first projects was to create a still life for a small painting with fruit, and I chose blueberries. From then on, I knew I wanted to continue to paint.
In my final year in High School, we were required to curate a show for our artwork. I decided to bring my passion for painting and fashion together and began painting fashion idols and created a dress out of paper from books that held significance to me.
I continued this journey throughout my time at SCAD and created Gift Art and Design. Gift Art and Design took off and grew in 2019/2020 when I took time off school to work and build my artwork. I went back to SCAD, and by my final year, I was combining fashion illustration with painting, further fusing my love for the fashion and painting worlds together. My large-scale fashion paintings continue and are now evolving in Gift Art and Design into experimenting with three-dimensional/sculptural paintings and design.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Rich colors, colorful makeup, hats, rhinestones, taffeta, bustles, and folds that engulf the human figure are what inspire me to paint. An investigation of how fashion shapes our perception of the human form is the focus of my practice. With painting, I find myself immersed when depicting shapes of fashion consuming the human form. The painting and fashion that I am interested in share themes of decoration, visual pleasure, imagination, and aesthetic luxury. In this world, the garment gives the body a shape and form that moves (with or against) the body in a beautiful and transformative way. Like most of us, expensive paintings and high fashion, are primarily accessible to me through social media and magazines fueling my desire to get my hands on the material and fabrics and to view the paintings in person in a gallery or museum. My desire for something sumptuous is attainable to me through painting, as I can produce images of beauty and fantasy referencing this unattainable luxury.
I enjoy working on canvas; however, recently, I have been experimenting with stretching Yupo paper over stretcher bars. The smooth texture of Yupo paper creates fluid brushstrokes, which helps create rich skin tones and is a great way to develop and build fabric texture. With the size of my studio in mind, I prefer creating large-scale acrylic-based paintings.
Alright, so before we go, can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I enjoy working and collaborating with other artists. There is so much to learn from working with one another through problem-solving. I noticed, especially sharing a studio with a classmate, that you can create artwork you might not have thought of before without bouncing ideas off of each other. It is fantastic to work with fellow artists; working with painters, sculpturists, and fashion designers allows me to come up with different ideas and materials I never thought I would experiment with.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.giftartanddesign.com/
- Instagram: @gift_artanddesign
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GiftArtandDesign/
