Annabella Boatwright (b. 1995) is a portrait artist, printmaker, and designer living in Nashville, TN. Born to two professional portrait artists in North Texas, she was deeply moved by the gentle West Texas landscapes beheld at an early age, and has since developed a creative ethos that is in conversation with the natural world—its light, materials, and traditions. Working with natural dyes and pigments in an eco conscious manner, her print work reveals subtly timeless impressions that stand as anthropological documents, as well as signposts to universal reckonings.

Her compositions, at times bucolic, and at others mundane, carry with them a democratic approach to subject matter that maturely eschews the pomp of more dramatic sources in favor of more subtle ones. Boatwright comfortably exists along this path of restraint, while contributing to the wider tradition of western art.

At the foundation of her practice is a deeply studied background in drawing, which she developed at Smith College through diverse and varied coursework. Tying together the threads of American painters such as Andrew Wyeth and European masters of representation she studied head-on while living in Florence, Italy, Annabella’s singular approach to portraiture is both playful, yet exacting—this is funded in no small part by her unique embracement of colored pencil, a tool which reveals new, lively possibilities within the tradition of portrait making.

In her words, “portraiture is the nexus between pigment, light, and human connection,” all of which she holds close as an interdisciplinary artist. This relationship to making work allows her the freedom to continue down an uncompromising path toward truth, empathy and the possibilities for art to serve direct and indirect functions. Clients of Annabella’s will be enriched by her interpersonal warmth, and ability to develop compositions that both represent cherished family members and serve as creative objects of the highest sort.