"Living in the north country sharpens the eye, longing as it does for the light," she muses. Ann Flewelling grew up along the fertile Aroostook River Valley in Northern Maine. By June she would be waiting, school almost out and shoes half off, for the sun to melt the snow on the line between field and woods on the hill across the river. By September, along with the rest of the school children, she would be helping with the harvest, picking bare-fleshed potatoes in crisp autumn light.
When Ann was twelve, potato picking money in hand, she bought her first 35mm camera. Now she could show what she saw: the sun setting over the farm pond, spider webs gathering dew in the waning light. Then, wanting an even closer view, she bought a Sears and Roebuck microscope, and soon was photographing blackfly wings. By her junior year Ann was at the state science fair exhibiting microphotography of snowflakes while all around her young Bill Gates types were building computers. Seeing no future in snowflakes, she proceeded along her career paths beginning with professional nursing in Boston, on to a university faculty position in Atlanta, finally ending up as a psychologist. Along the way Ann took courses at the Southeastern School of Photographic Arts. Her work began to appear around town.
While she was Director of the Emory University School of Medicine Physician Associate Program, Ann, building on her a BA in English, was pursuing graduate studies in the clinical psychology program at Georgia State University. After earning her PhD in 1990, she became clinical director of a community mental health center in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia, where she lived and also had a private practice.
Following the light back up the Appalachian Mountain chain, Ann and her husband Charles Read, a retired teacher, returned to Maine in 1999 to build their home together along the Bagaduce River. Here, in her practice both as a clinical psychologist and as a photographer, she continues to view private experience in its own natural light. Ann’s photography, which has appeared in Downeast shops, galleries, and print media, now appears in Deer Isle venues where, joining with others in support of the environment, Ann speaks in the language of image and light.
Click here to see some of Ann's solo work.