Biographical Information
I was born in California and raised in Connecticut but have spent most of my adult life living in Vermont. My great, great, great grandparents helped settle Middlebury, Vermont and my father, a native Vermonter, who worked in New York City as an editor of books, instilled a love of the mountains in all of his five children. I understood at an early age, while spending my summers on a horse farm in Middlebury, that Vermont was where I felt most at home.
After graduating from Middlebury College in 1973, where I studied printmaking with David Bumbeck, I devoted my career to the arts. While raising my four children I established “ The Children’s Art School” where I worked as a private art educator dedicated to providing substantive art experience to young people.
In 1990 my teaching career was honored by Middlebury College with a gallery exhibition entitled “A Child’s Vision.” This show of my student’s work was part of the college’s annual recognition of alumni in the arts. The day the show closed my father died. During the difficult winter that followed I was invited to join a painting guild. It was then that I began to focus on my own personal vision.
In 1997, one year after the birth of my fourth child, I had my first solo gallery exhibition. After twenty-five years of teaching I closed up “The Children’s Art School.” Sales of my work over the past thirty years to thousands of private collectors throughout the world have made it clear that becoming a full time painter at that point in time was the right choice. But, the approach I bring to my work remains in part a result of the many years of making art with children. Their gift to me was to show me over and over again the simple, colorful and expressive way in which they interpreted the world around them.
My home and studio are located on a small horse farm in New Haven, Vermont. If I am early enough I can watch the sun rising over the Green Mountains, and in the evening have views of the sun setting in the Adirondacks.
My work pays homage to the extraordinary beauty of Vermont, the farms, the fields and the mountains that surround me. When visitors arrive at my studio they often comment that they feel like they have just driven through an Anne Cady Painting.