Anita White
“My Heart Holds All of This:
Mexican and Minnesota Musings”
Anita White always finds herself “drawing her way through” her life – whether beautiful moments of travel and peaceful reflection or during experiences of pain and grief.
​
White brings gel pens, Japanese brush pens and a small watercolor set wherever she goes, using her lap as her studio. And her motto, “Nothing is So Scary You Can’t Draw It!” has helped her cope with the difficult moments, whether spending time in the hospital with loved ones, caring for elderly parents and other crises throughout the past 60 years of drawing her way through life.
​
In this collection, White explores what it was like to be in lovely warm Mexico earlier this year, while Minnesota endured the ICE occupation. Stories from Minnesota reached her during her journey, stirring reflections of the courage of her late mother who lived in Vienna during the Nazi occupation of WWII.
​
“My suite of paintings reflects this range of emotions,” said White. “My inspiration for these pieces come from daily inspiration I found in Mexico while being painfully aware of the struggles my fellow Minnesotans were having back home.”
Enjoying beauty in a faraway place like Mexico also brought up vivid memories of an earlier trip, when she visited Mexico thanks to a Lucky Travel Certificate win in 1992.
​
“That journey shaped me deeply in so many ways,” White recalled. “While there I drew in the moment in the market and took many photos of the vendadoras (street vendors), markets and courtyards.”
​
At the same time that she enjoyed the beauty of Mexico and reflected on memories of past travel, she couldn’t entirely leave her home behind. White followed news from Minnesota during her trip, empathizing with the plight of her Minnesota community as it bore witness to the ICE occupation. She recognized how it created a resilient community that resisted ICE through the amazing support given to one another.
​
“The experience was a balance of being in the moment of beauty in Mexico and feeling the strife back home in Minnesota at the same time,” she said. “I’d like the viewer to focus on how a person can express different inner and outer points of view.”
​
Anita White’s art will be shown in the Mark Roberts Gallery, Vine Arts Center March 28- April 25.
Anita White
Hollyhocks
Trillium
Archival Revival! Botanical Linoleum Block Prints (1980s to 1990s)
If you’re familiar with Anita White’s work, you may know her lively watercolors documenting people and places from everyday life. But this collection stands apart, celebrating the flowers and plants she loves through an entirely different medium: linoleum prints.
“These works show my love of flowers and native plants that grow in the Midwest, like bloodroot and trillium, along with seasonal flowers like lilacs, morning glories and hollyhocks,” White said.
While she has been creating art for over 60 years, White’s first foray into linoleum block printing began in the 1980s, when her late husband Josh helped her make 12”x12” boards for linoleum blocks on which she would draw and carve images of plants and flowers in plein air, letting the warmth of the sun help make the carving process easier.
She was inspired by wooded areas at a farm co-op where she enjoyed her summer vacations from teaching art. There she drew trillium, bloodroot plants with their large fan-like leaves, peonies, roses, morning glories, tiger lilies and sunflowers, that “circled around my heart year after year.”
White created these bold, graphic botanical works using printing ink and various kinds of paper, from simple white Japanese rice paper, then expanding to use many kinds of handmade colored papers.
“I love the way the print would change on the various papers,” White observed.
Reviving these pieces from years ago helps her celebrate a lifetime of creation, while also reigniting her love of nature.
“Even though art piles up, it is my everyday activity and my way of expressing the beauty I see in the world,” White says. “My lovely summers of creating these prints now surface to share with you again!”
White plans to create a 2026 calendar using images from these prints, and encourages other artists to delve into their archives for inspiration: “I would like the viewer to reflect on projects or ideas they worked on years ago and see how those ideas can have another life decades later!”
Anita White’s work will be in the Vine Arts Member Gallery June 7 through July 5. The opening for the show is June 7 from 6:00 to 9:00 pm.
