Anne Schaefer’s studio practice spans printmaking, painting, and large-scale installation, with color and pattern serving as central forces in creating optically dynamic and perceptually immersive experiences. Her work investigates the interplay of materials, processes, and substrates, resulting in layered abstractions that emphasize both visual and tactile engagement.

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Committed to a non-hierarchical approach to making, Schaefer embraces experimentation and iteration as core methodologies. She moves fluidly between painting, screen-printing, and digital surface treatments, allowing each medium to inform the others. Through this rigorous and responsive process, she constructs a visual language rooted in the physical act of making.

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Working on multiple pieces simultaneously, Schaefer develops a vocabulary that circulates across works, producing unexpected relationships in color and pattern. Like a musician sampling and remixing sound, she frequently draws from her own archive—repurposing fragments, castoffs, and prior compositions. These materials are scanned, reworked, and reintroduced as silkscreens or digitally printed grounds, underscoring an iterative practice shaped by the by-products of the studio and the legacy of collage.

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Her process is both disciplined and open-ended, driven by material inquiry and attentive observation. Each work evolves through a dialogue between intention and response, with outcomes emerging through action—whether a pull of ink across a screen or the reactivation of stored imagery. Schaefer seeks to create non-objective spaces that are internally resolved yet externally discovered, where perception remains fluid and meaning resists prescription. The resulting works inhabit a space that is at once tactile and cerebral, structured yet intuitive, vibrating with a sense of the unknown.

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Schaefer's work has been featured in group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Washington University and a Master of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Schaefer is a former print fellow at the Fabric Workshop and Museum and has been a college-level art educator for the last 15 years. She has been a member of a number of artist collectives such as Vox Populi as well as Tiger Strikes Asteroid, where she served as director from 2011-2013. She currently lives and works in upstate New York.