"Folks moving to the [Leiper's Fork] area are attracted by the beauty of the place, but the sheer volume of new residents is irretrievably changing that very landscape.”
Anne Goetze has documented the Leiper's Fork area in her photography and painting over the last ten years. Her work has consistently shown the destruction of farmlands and people being displaced by the advent of Highway 840 cutting through the heartland of Williamson County.
This most recent series demonstrates that the radius of her beloved country has become smaller as suburban sprawl is now in full swing. Like her artistic mentor Dorothea Lange before her, Goetze starts her work as a documentary exercise. Lange turned an assignment to document the Dust Bowl of the 1930s into a passionate and legendary artistic photographic series of the loss suffered by the land and people in the Dust Bowl. Goetze, too has developed a passionate commitment to the people and places of this Middle Tennessee region, transforming her documentary images into passionate artistic statements that combine both her artistic and painting skills.
Goetze's new series gives a contemporary feel in style and scale to traditional landscape paintings. She combines large formats and painterly interpretations, adding a sense of intimacy and elegance to a landscape that is verging on extinction.
Anne Goetze was born into a family of artists and photographers. She has apprenticed with both photographers and painters, and continues to document her insights into the countryside of Leiper's Fork, with her husband and son…and a menagerie of animals.
