The books of Anne Grgich

First published:Spring 1998

Anne Grgich is essentially a self-taught artist. She has filled countless notebooks with poetry and sketches or 'doodles' since her childhood. These books have a long and circuitous evolution into her present, fabulously dense collage paintings and painted books. Grgich works on canvas and still fills books but instead of a pen, she uses a brush, pens, crayons, wax and whatever else comes her way. The poetic words have disappeared. In their place, Grgich paints sharply peculiar yet forcefully compelling human faces. Her images have a pure visionary nature.

Grgich's life has been more traumatic than most. At age nineteen, she suffered from a serious car accident that placed her in a coma for two months and has consequently caused her pain and surgery ever since. After the accident she became mixed up in a mind-controlling cult.

She escaped but joined a punk-rock subculture involved with drugs, and married an addict. When she found herself pregnant, Grgich pulled herself together, left drugs and an abusive marriage behind and gave birth to her son Jasper. Despite all the suffering, troubles and confusion, Grgich never stopped making art. She said, it's what gets her through.

This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision #22