Annette Lemieux

Annette Lemieux
Annette Lemieux, 2015. Photo by Elyse Harary.
Born	1957 Norfolk, Virginia
Nationality	American
Movement	Pictures Generation
Website	http://annettelemieux.net/

Annette Lemieux (born 1957 in Norfolk, Virginia) is an American artist who emerged in the early 1980s generation of “picture theory” artists (David Salle, Jack Goldstein, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Richard Prince). Lemieux brought to the studio a discipline equally based on introspection, and the manifestations of an ideological minimalism. Process is a key component in the execution of her works over the past three decades, creating the lure to the confrontation of issues of social and historical urgency. Lemieux has been the recipient of awards from the National Endowment of the Arts and Brown University as well as an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts from Monserrat College of Art. Presently, in addition to her studio and exhibition schedule, she is a senior lecturer at Harvard University in the area of visual and environmental studies.

Lemieux is represented by Kent Fine Art in New York.

Annette Rose Lemieux was born in Norfolk, Virginia. Her father Joseph was in the Marines, and the family lived in a house close to the base. When Lemieux's father was called overseas, her mother, Margaret, moved with their two daughters - Annette and Suzette - to her hometown of Torrington, Connecticut. Later on, she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Hartford in Connecticut.

In early works like, It’s a Wonderful Life,1986 [named after the 1946 Frank Capra film], Lemieux incorporated multiple forms of popular media to create a narrative in the form of self-doubt, personal vulnerability, along with an awareness of the absurdist political/religious/economic histories we accumulate as a civilization in a never-ending current. Following the legacies of Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage, she works to narrow the gap between “art” and “life”. Lemieux's works resist the traps of a “signature style,” and she has referred to her shows looking more like group shows rather than a single artist's. Her work surprises us, challenges her audience to keep up, and resists the conformity of the brand. As stated by Peggy Phelan, “For Lemieux, the art object offers her thoughts and feelings a way to travel . . . Art is her way of responding, both publicly and intimately, to the ongoing predicament of our lives”.