PRAY TO LOVE
Anne Goetze, Tennessee painter, photographer, and filmmaker was influenced by
art at a very early age, being born into an artistic family. Her father and grandfather were both photographers. Likewise, her mother provided a backdrop of visual poetry with her ongoing creation of works in embroidery and cultivation of beautiful gardens.
Those memories left a lasting impression on Anne. In addition, she cites her influences to be the documentary photography of Dorothea Lange during the Depression Era, and the paintings of the French and American Impressionists from the late nineteenth century.
As she pursued her artistic interests in school, college soon became disheartening in her quest to learn the hands-on of photography, lighting, and film. She turned to apprenticing with professional photographers and taking private art lessons. She has studied with contemporary artists and friends like Anton Weiss, Quang Ho, Skip Whitcomb, and Dawn Whitelaw. For Anne, painting offered her a complementary medium of expression, running parallel to and intersecting with her work in photography. As a retouch artist in the music business in Nashville for years, she developed a particular technique where she combines the two mediums.
Goetze believes there is a connection with God via creation and, be they a spiritual
seeker or one who’s finally found their standing, every living soul desires a “sense
of place.” That place for her was found on a small farm out in the country, where
the landscape and rural life soon became her cherished subject matter. For over
twenty years now, she has also traveled back and forth to the French Alps of Annecy to document through art, the beauty of the cloistered life of the nuns living and working within the Monastery of the Visitation.
With a persistent love and concern for the land, she is involved with many
environmental and conservation groups, helping to bring awareness through both
the arts and activism.
Her current project is a nature documentary about Tennessee that is now presented by Nashville PBS and airing nationwide on American Public Television. She is a founding member of The Chestnut Group, a non-profit plein air painters group dedicated to land conservancy, and is on the advisory board for Warner Parks, Tn.
Anne’s work is in the permanent collections of The Tennessee State Museum, the
Booth Western Art Museum, the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and Vanderbilt
Mental Health and Cancer Hospitals, as well as national and international personal
collections.
