Looking Glass

Annie Duncan (b. 1997, San Francisco, California) makes paintings and ceramic sculptures that explore femininity, symbolism, and art historical references. Leaning into her affinity for collecting, sorting, and obsessing over objects, her work finds humor, heartbreak, joy, and meaning in the jumbled world we inhabit. She received a BA from Vassar College in 2019 and an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2023. Annie was a featured artist with Plunge Towels. She has shown her work in California and New York. 

CV

Annie Duncan makes large-scale still lifes—both in the form of acrylic paintings and ceramic sculptures. Working directly from life, she creates alluring compositions that evoke the pile on top of a dresser, the emptied contents of a purse, or the chaos on the floor of a bedroom. In these saturated and distorted works, she explores the power of objects as symbols and storytelling devices. In traditional still life painting, elements like flowers or shells are used as allusions to the female body. She explores these symbols and pairs them with more contemporary references—objects like a plastic razor, an IUD, accessories, or beauty products—that encapsulate aspirational ideals of gender, femininity, and sexuality. In scaling up the objects, she emphasizes their cultural and personal significance, reframing their historical value.

Saint Joseph’s Arts Society, founded by Ken Fulk in 2018, was established to celebrate arts and culture in all forms in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.