Annette Sykes is a painter who works in media ranging from oil to watercolors to pastels, especially when she is painting her favorite local ocean-scapes and cityscapes. She also works with a range of drawing materials especially when doing life drawings and portraiture. She works mostly from life – as an observational artist, Annette draws and paints what she sees. She shows her work at GALA (the Galleries At LynnArts) in Lynn, MA ,as well as, other galleries and businesses around the North Shore of Boston.
Annette has a studio at LynnArts and is the Gallery Director at GALA. She has also been appointed to the Lynn Public Arts Commission and has served as Chair and Secretary of that Commission. In addition to her volunteer efforts to support the arts community on the North Shore of Boston, she directs a weekly Figurative Art Drawing Group at the Gallery, bringing together a group of artists who draw and paint from the model and forming a community of artists in Lynn – Annette organizes this group to take monthly trips to regional museums and galleries, as well as to participate in local plein air events and hopes to participate in national portrait competitions with the group in the coming year.
After spending her formative years in the Midwest – Wisconsin and Missouri, Annette studied fashion design in New York in the mid-1990’s and then transitioned to the fine arts when she moved to Boston. She worked at First Expressions, an art gallery just off Newbury Street, while she attended a post-baccalaureate course of studies in sculpture and textiles at the Massachusetts College of Art. In 2001, while living for a short time in San Francisco, Annette graduated from the California College of the Arts with an MFA – focus on textiles. She then returned to the East Coast and settled in Lynn, MA. Having, now, spent almost half of her life in Lynn, and having taught in Lynn Public Schools for 19 years, Annette feels warmly connected to the community. She lives on the ocean with her husband, directly across from Kings Beach and Red Rock Park from which she draws much inspiration for plein air paintings.
