Bio
Anne Varick is a sculptor, painter, draftsman and digital artist. A long-time resident of San Diego, she was born in New York City in 1940. While attending boarding school in Massachusetts, she won the Boston Globe’s Scholastic Art Award (1960) and her work selected for display in the Art Awards exhibition at Boston University’s School of Fine Arts. She attended art school at Finch College in New York where she received her Associate of Arts degree (1961). She furthered her artistic training in New York City at Hunter College and the Art Life-Craft Studio.
Anne Varick moved to La Jolla, CA, in 1970 where she was mentored by local artists, Virginia Cromwell and Renata Spiazzi (1926-2021).
In 1977 she had her first public exhibition in La Jolla. A selection of her large and small-scale sculpture in cast bronze, marble and pewter were shown in “New Dimensions and Perspectives” at the Quenzler Art Studio in La Jolla. Richard Reilly, Art Critic for The San Diego Union, wrote:
“Varick’s figures combine naturalism with a certain degree of primitivism and remind one of Henry Moore’s characteristic human forms…some artists register only deformities, Varick registers beauty…one hopes it will be the beginning of a distinguished career…”
- Richard Reilly in The San Diego Union, February 20, 1977, p. 79.
Anne Varick also exhibited her sculpture in the 1977 Summer Arts Festival at the San Diego Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Gallery in Balboa Park as well as at the Art Center, Rancho Santa Fe. In 1983 her sculpture was exhibited at the Art Expo in New York City and Dallas.
Anne Varick had her first solo exhibition at the PPA Gallery in Pittsburgh (formerly Pittsburgh Plan for Art) in 1984. Fantasy in Form included objects in bronze, marble, slate, cast paper as well as drawings. Described by Pittsburgh art critic, Darren Hvizdash, as an “eclectic extravaganza”, he noted:
“Creating objects that are familiar but yet unidentifiable is a favorite theme in Anne Varick’s work. Often she will take one of these forms and create a series of works in which each successive segment of the series is altered slightly from the last. What is amazing about these forms is that they look familiar but can’t be identified. They have shape, but they are shapeless.”
- Darren Hvizdash, in Pitts News, October 19, 1984, p. 15.
In more recent years Anne Varick has been focusing on digital art. She has been member of the Digital Art Guild of San Diego since 2019 and joined the SDMA Artists Guild in 2023. She was elected as a member of the Los Angeles Art Association (LAAA) in 2024.
