(DE)VICES is a compilation of figurative paintings from the past decade that explore concepts and examine human relationships through devised images. Representations of the human figure invariably evoke empathy or engagement, the self or the other; the viewer is either drawn into the image or placed in opposition to it. Here, these paintings use the figure as an armature on which to hang conceptual investigations into the human condition. The figures themselves are assigned roles, stripped of their context, and arranged in conversation with one or more objects: the "devices." These devices — teacups, flowers, animals, wigs, and other miscellanea — are familiar, recurring, and often totemic. The combination of the figures' poses, gestures, and imagined purposes with these symbolic devices sets the pictorial stage for unusual narrative suggestions, revealing in equal parts the imagination and psyche of the artist and the viewer. 

Ann Piper is Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at Susquehanna University, where she has worked and taught since 2008. She earned her BFA in General Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA in Painting and Drawing from New Mexico State University. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at the Alexandria Museum of Art, MANIFEST: Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center, Indianapolis Art Center, Women's Studio Workshop, McNeese State University, and the Roswell Museum and Art Center. She has been the recipient of the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Grant (New Mexico), and has held residencies at Jentel (Wyoming), Pentaculum at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (Tennessee), the All Print Media Residency (Pennsylvania), Studios Midwest (Illinois), and Weir Farm (Connecticut). Selected collections include the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum in Manhattan, Kansas; the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art in Roswell, New Mexico; and the Mulvane Museum in Topeka, Kansas.