Reflections on Nature: Ann Semprebon

July 26-September 13, 2024

Featured Artist in The Bank Street Gallery at AVA

Artist Statement

Over the last forty years, Ann Semprebon has worked in her preferred mediums of watercolor and etching on copper plates. Originally from the Southwest, living in small, suburban tracts, she had little access to the greater natural world.

All that changed when she moved to the Upper Valley and bought a house on two acres that bordered undeveloped woodlands. Semprebon became fascinated by the changing seasons and landscape of the Northeast and the variety of plants and wildlife around her. Much of her work has been motivated by her love of nature and growing things.

Semprebon has also become aware of the dangers facing the natural world she loves so much and has created work addressing what she calls her “disaster series” of prints and watercolors that have been integrated into the work celebrating the natural world around her, presenting the duality of life as we know it.

Bio:

Ann Semprebon grew up in Los Angeles, CA, and Las Vegas, NV. She knew from an early age that she wanted to be an artist and received her B.A and M.A in fine arts from UCLA. When she moved to the Upper Valley, she continued to study with local artists and at Dartmouth College. She has taught art to all ages, from elementary students to adults through the school system, Osher, and privately in her garden studio. In 1973, Semprebon was one of the twenty artists who showed their work in the Nye’s barn in Norwich, and in 1974, she was part of the first board of directors for the nascent organization that became AVA Gallery and Art Center. She has continued participating in exhibitions at AVA over the past fifty years. She was also one of the founding members of Two Rivers Printmaking Studio in White River Junction, VT, and has etchings in the 2004 and 2006 studio portfolios that were collected by private collectors and institutions such as the Boston Public Library, the Hood Museum of Art, and the University of Vermont. Semprebon’s etchings, watercolors, and acrylics have been shown throughout Vermont and New Hampshire in various exhibitions and galleries.