“Ann Carstensen’s nautical-inspired paintings are examples of high craft and beauty… Her latest show should offer an even more lovely batch of subtle abstract paintings.”
D.K. Row, Oregonian 2003
“Ann Carstensen’s…interest in referencing the ordinary. Materials …motivate Carstensen, who works with corrugated paper-the fragile kind…The paintings mimic the ‘60s Op art experiments of painters such as Bridget Riley.”
Pat Boas, Artweek 2000
“The show should be looked upon as a reminder that some of the best artists are under recognized in the city’s more prized commercial venues…she’s substituted the undulating shapes of found corrugated paper…from the distance the wavy, repetitious grooves of the paper …seem to shift… While Carstensen’s work has always been eye-worthy, here for the first time, she is eye catching.”
D.K. Row, Oregonian 2000
“A seductive tabula rasa…Carstensen is doing her own thing…One particular work, ‘One,’ is incandescent in its power, though visually it is so austere as to be close to a tabula rasa. If it’s possible for paintings like this to shine, this one does, and in the most meaningful metaphorical sense of the word.”
D.K. Row, Oregonian 1999
“Ann Carstensen a very talented local painter, shows mixed-media paintings that are noteworthy for their ridged surfaces as well as their meditative, gometric designs.”
D.K. Row, Oregonian 1999
“In the spirit of collaboration”, Renee Zangara and Ann Carstensen have made two beautiful mixed-media paintings…that fuse the former’s forest imagery and the latter’s rich, stubbly surface textures into canvases that evoke a lingering sensuousness and a Zen calm.”
D.K. Row, Oregonian 1998
“Carstensen weaves scruffy, textured surfaces…which oblige the eye as objects of meditation… Many of these paintings also possess an aura of solemnity reminiscent of Jasper John…these are quietly seductive paintings. Like creamy vanilla ice cream, they are minimal, understated and crafted for accessible human consumption.”
D.K. Row, Oregonian 1998
“As aforementioned, Ann Carstensen admits she is “more interested in textures than colors, “ and her minimal palette reflects that. It also makes her color choices all the more revealing. She uses the colors of the sea: tans, deep blue greens, tattered whites and so forth. Add that to her obsession with nautical markings and throw in her use of worn doors, cardboard, and sandpaper … One concludes that her paintings express, on a literal level, a longing for the vistas of her native Seattle.”
Keith Halladay, Arts & Culture Fall 1997
“Ann Carstensen loves intense color, minimalist forms and rough surfaces, and puts them all together for an effect of surprising intensity. ..”Mixed Signals” is one of the most resonant pure abstract paintings seen in this town in a while.”
Randy Gragg, Oregonian 1996
