Porch Talk with Ann Arscott

by Donna Geer, Staff Writer

Ann Arscott

Maybe it was the ease of that first hello before I’d even gotten out of my car. Or maybe it was our idle chatter as I gathered my things from the front seat. I’m usually the one asking all the questions when I first meet someone, but this was like talking to an old friend I hadn’t seen in a long while. It was quite charming. I’d come to talk about her paintings, and while we dabbled here and there, we spent more time talking about world travels, different cultures, even politics, and how we’re all the same underneath our skin.

Ann Arscott has been to almost every country in the world, at least 130 by her last count. She’s taken long cruises to Europe and Asia and traveled to Argentina and Australia. She’s ridden a bus down Straight Street in Damascus, Syria, a road also known as the ‘Street called Straight’ in the New Testament. She’s had dinner in dark hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Beirut. She’s been to Papua, New Guinea, where her husband John once caught typhoid fever and had to be medevac’d to Australia in the sexiest New Zealand airplane she says she’s ever seen. Most of the countries they’ve visited through the years are represented in the art that adorns the walls of Ann’s lovely home. Colorful paintings and artifacts, every one of them with a story, hang on the walls, some of them next to Ann’s own work.

She’s loved art ever since she was a child. She used to hide behind the family Christmas tree with paper and pencils, drawing pictures when she was three years old. She won her first art contest with a pencil drawing, but she was always drawn to paint. When she was seven, she used to cash in bottles for the deposits. New York City apartment buildings, like the one her family lived in, afforded all kinds of bottle-collecting opportunities. Liquid gold, she called it. She used the deposits to purchase small tubes of oil paint.

Now she paints in all kinds of mediums, like pastels and watercolors, Chinese brush

painting and Sumi-e, a Japanese black ink painting style, but she loves oils the most. She’s had art shows in Washington, New York, New Jersey and Japan. Her paintings are currently displayed at the Port Ludlow Art League Gallery and Gallery Nine in Port Townsend. In fact, she’d just sold a painting the day before our conversation.

When I asked her where she gets her inspiration, she said it’s mostly from her travels or from what she sees in nature. But sometimes she’ll start with a picture of a place or an animal or something else that’s inspired her. But she’s going to paint it her way, breathing new life into landscapes, animals and birds in flight. She showed me a print of wise Simba, the lion, calmly gazing through grasses, and another painting of vermillion Torii gates towering over charcoal-colored stairs. Landscapes of the mountains, of the sea…

Ann has always found time to paint, even when she worked at different jobs through the years. One place she used to work for was at J. Walter Thompson, an advertising agency in New York City. Though she claimed she couldn’t type, Ann started as a secretary and worked her way up to Assistant to the Creative Advisor, which involved all kinds of PR events. She had lots of fun with that role.

She got back to her roots in the city when she volunteered at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History, completing a two-year teaching program and a nine-hour exam just so she could lead groups through the museum and teach a little geology along the way. She said she met all kinds of smart people and made a lot of good friends. That’s why she stays on the board.

But Ann’s most proud of her husband and her children. She said her family’s been the linchpin of her life, that they’ve done the most wonderful things. She’s had a pretty happy life.

She met her husband John, a graduate of Harvard Business School and Yale, in a Greenwich Village fleabag apartment she shared with her friend Kathy. The way Ann told it, he just showed up with her roommate’s boyfriend one night and they clicked. Ann says that fleabag apartment became party central for a while. She and John married a year later and moved to a rent-controlled apartment for a while. Once they had kids, it was off to the suburbs.

For the last twenty years, her son John has been a teacher in Kyoto, Japan. His school teaches every class subject in both Japanese and English languages. Her daughter, an artist like Ann, has eight children. One of Jennifer’s paintings hangs in Ann’s foyer. The large open space barely contains the vibrant colors jumping from the enormous canvas.

The light’s shining through the ceiling-high windows as we leave her studio and head downstairs. Everywhere I look, there’s spectacular art on the walls, like the chiseled mahogany mask from Haiti, or the exquisite Japanese panels that look like they might have come straight from a traditional teahouse in Kyoto. Her home pays homage to a lifetime of collecting objects that represent different cultures from around the world. Her paintings challenge you to really look outside again.

She leaves room for a bit of whimsey, like the stuffed orange elephant tucked in a chair at the head of the dining room table. Maybe she takes the world a little lighter than some, she said, but it’ll bury you if you let it. That’s why everyone’s welcome at her table.

You can find these and other stories online at plvoice.org. As you already know, our little town is an eclectic mix of wonderful and interesting people. Some were born here and many more come from elsewhere, but all of us have chosen to make Port Ludlow our home. Every one of us has a great story, so let’s sit on the porch and have a conversation. We can share a cup of coffee, or tea, if preferred. You can reach me at sports@plvoice.org. Looking forward to hearing from you!