Ourgothlaundry?

July 12, 2009 7:38 AM

The Art & Life of Annie Truxell[via mefi projects]: Annie Truxell is a well known painter who has lived a long and fascinating life. Her adventures have been legendary, encompassing Greenwich Village in the 50s, London in the 60s and India in the 70s. She was friends with Franz Klein, Bill de Kooning, Truman Capote, Terry Southern, Mati Klarwein & many other wild & woolly people.
posted by The Whelk (11 comments total)

I was searching around Projects and now I'm totally a fan despite not usually being into the style. I'd love "They told me to juggle these" as a postcard.
posted by The Whelk at 7:45 AM on July 12

Nice. Very interesting.
posted by jayder at 8:46 AM on July 12

the paintings are pretty, and decorative. and that's not a bad thing.
posted by billybobtoo at 8:55 AM on July 12

Omg, mygothlaundry, so this is your aunt?! What an awesome legacy to put her work and biography up on the web for a whole new generation to learn about, see and read. Now this is the way to do a life story on the web.

Her art has such a wide range of styles and images. This is a charming poster with the music taking wing. Mysterious and interesting portrait of Conrad Aiken. So many are outstanding: Smoking l and magical, child-like and complex at the same time. I can't help wondering what she was referring to, like in Free At Last.

I love her gentle face. It looks as if she were shy and sensitive in those old photographs.

Fascinating she ended up living near Robert Graves in Mallorca, as I consider his I, Claudius to be the best ever depiction of the extended malignant narcissist family. I would so love to read some pages of Annie Truxell's anecdotes, about the people she met on her way.

Learning through your site about Deià, Mallorca, where she and so many fascinating people lived, has been so interesting. It prompted me to look up old friends who've spent most of their adult lives on Ibiza, nearby and go on a wonderful Facebook journey of sorts.

wow. So enjoyed this. It's just right as an artist's site. Nice work! Excellent brief but entertaining and sympathetic biography of Annie Truxell with great vintage pictures of her life, friends, places. Easy to use displays of her amazingly varied art through the decades.

A wonderful exploration of an amazing life.
posted by nickyskye at 1:00 PM on July 12

Oh wow! Thank you, whelk! It's great to see this on the blue! Annie will be tickled; I'm going to pick her up in an hour and take her over to a friends for drinks & dinner. She's been on a vodka & cranberry kick; be afraid, world, be a little afraid. She's great; I could tell Annie stories all day and night. I lived with her in Deia as a teenager.

Actually after all the people asked about posters I brought it up with Annie on Friday evening. She likes the idea so we're going to look into getting some posters done, signing them and seeing about selling them. Hee, with posters she won't be able to change them. Back in the day she was notorious for selling paintings and then going over to peoples' houses and taking them back, saying they just needed a small change or two and then keeping them for years.

Working on the site led me to a whole lot of cool things too, y'all - check out the links page. Deia Heydays is a cool site started by my stepcousin Oona. I also heartily recommend the Terry Southern site; I got immersed in it for hours.
posted by mygothlaundry at 1:30 PM on July 12 [1 favorite has favorites]

Loved those additional links mygothlaundry. Lots to explore! Wondering why Oona didn't include Robert Graves in the Heyday site?

Oh, I want to hear the anecdotes! Please! It's also just so nice to hear about your loving relationship with your artist aunt, being able to add this whole new dimension of the web into her life. wow, So you also spent time in Deià? Please will you write about that on your blog? Pretty please.

Posters is a great idea for Annie Truxell's art. I know some street artists-vendors here in NYC find a way to add a dash of color to color laser images, just a smidge here and there and this makes the image "original, signed and dated, it can sell for much more.

There are very inexpensive mats on the web too, that might be a good way to present prints in your online store?
posted by nickyskye at 2:19 PM on July 12

Good stuff here, thanks.
posted by nola at 3:47 PM on July 12

Wonderful post, art, and website!
posted by marxchivist at 9:14 PM on July 12

Ahh Deia. It's touristy now. Where the bars were full of self proclaimed "artists" most of whom were still unknown and still are. The actual artists didn't go out so much. It's a pretty village with some pretty strange inhabitants. I spent a lot of the winter there in 78 / 79; The time of the last Iranian Revolution. It was quiet, damp and cold. Normal for winter. There was an itinerant population of genuinely talented people then many of whom departed for warmer climes as autumn came. Thank you for the Heydays link; it has helped me find an old friend. I shall be in the village later this week.
posted by adamvasco at 3:36 AM on July 13

I'm glad someone posted this. I thought it was great when I saw it in projects and I still do! Great artwork.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:31 AM on July 13

So appropriate that she is now in Asheville. Thanks for the post.
posted by haikuku at 1:26 PM on July 13