Artist Statement

Anne de Marcken | Artist Statement

I’m from opposite places. From an island in the North Atlantic and a lake high in the Sierras. From wooden boats and quarter horses. I have an MFA, but no high school diploma. I’ve raised blackbirds, loons, swallows and no children. I’m skeptical and wholehearted. I’m queer. I’m still the girl in the photograph someone snapped—streaking along the edge of an ocean, stripped down to my underpants, hair wild as a warthog’s mane. Now I live at the southernmost tip of the Salish Sea. I have two desks in the room where I work. One for my writing. One for my work as an editor and publisher. I move the same chair back and forth. I am the same artist no matter where I’m sitting. It is all part of the same creative endeavor—a way of being in the world, of listening closely, of making connections and meaning.