Annalise Gratovich

Annalise Gratovich is a print-centric artist living and working in Austin, Texas. She specializes in large-scale woodcuts, etchings, and collage. Annalise’s work investigates her identity as the second-generation daughter of a Ukrainian war refugee living in the American South, and more recently, her experience with chronic illness and disability. Her print and collage work is largely figurative and surrealistic. It draws information from her heritage and contemplation of longing and belonging, displacement and diaspora. Her imagery explores personhood, identity, loss, and the natural world where roots- both figurative and literal- are planted.

Annalise sits on the Board of PrintAustin and works in the Prints & Drawings Department of the Blanton Museum. Her studio is housed at Canopy Austin and her upcoming exhibitions are with the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND, Flatbed Press in Austin, TX, and Hecho Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.

As far as being a print-centric artist, Annalise says, “The pull I feel towards creating works on paper and creating manually with old machinery, using hand tools, in communal environments, I’ve come to realize is directly related to my relationship with the nature of paper and tools as both object and symbol. Through loss and dispersal, via time or diaspora, the meaning encompassed within materials- paper or tools- becomes something greater than the material or object itself. There are printmaking papers I use that come from the workshops of specific families. Tools are heritage items; my press is 100 years old. I grasp the wooden handle that turns the heavy gears and think of the other hands that made the patina. By working communally I can explore independence through the lens of community. This is why I’m a printmaker and why my chosen process is intrinsic to my imagery.”

Artwork from Motley Multiples is now available to collect below. Read the press release here.