Anne Deon
Anne Deon is a New York–born visual artist whose career spans painting, film, and performance. Raised in New York City, she became part of the pioneering wave of artists who transformed SoHo into a global center of contemporary art during the mid-1970s. Deon immersed herself in the emerging downtown art scene, participating in numerous group exhibitions throughout SoHo and lower Manhattan. During this formative period she exhibited paintings, screened Super-8 films, and performed at several of the era’s most influential venues, including the legendary Times Square Art Show, The Kitchen, Neo Personna Gallery, and Projects of Living Artists, among many others.
Like many experimental artists of that time, she performed in art-punk bands at iconic New York venues such as Max’s Kansas City, CBGB, The Peppermint Lounge, and The Mudd Club — spaces that became synonymous with the revolutionary cultural energy of downtown New York. In the early 1980s she collaborated musically with Alan Vega, recording Just a Million Dreams for Elektra Records, produced by Ric Ocasek of The Cars.
Throughout her career Deon has developed several major painting series that reflect her wide-ranging artistic influences. Heroes, Outlaws, Angels & Rebels explores iconic figures from American culture through a Pop-Art lens, incorporating images such as the Statue of Liberty, Muhammad Ali, Marilyn Monroe, and the Jesse James Gang. Her Ancestors & Ghosts seriesdraws from ancient and tribal traditions across civilizations and millennia. The series reflects influences from African, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Sumerian, Aboriginal, Native American, Incan, Aztec, Mayan, and Toltec visual languages. Her current body of work, Pure Escapism, continues this exploration of symbolic imagery and imaginative space, while Deon periodically returns to expand earlier series and her abstract works.
In the early 1990s Deon relocated from New York to Los Angeles, continuing her creative practice while exhibiting in galleries across Southern California including West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Malibu, Laguna Beach, Anaheim, and Los Feliz.
One of her paintings from the Liberty series gained national exposure when it appeared for several seasons on the ABC television sitcom The King of Queens, one of the most successful sitcoms of its era. The same painting was later featured on the cover of the Set Decorators Society of America Magazine (SDSA) for the September 2001 issue. Released just days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Liberty image became a powerful visual tribute to New York City and the United States.
Anne Deon currently lives and works in South Florida and exhibits at Bitton Art Gallery at Dania Pointe, continuing her decades-long artistic journey
