painter, illustrator, printmaker and sculptor, was born at Leura in the Blue Mountains NSW, only child of Arnold Wienholt, a pastoralist of Washpool Farm near Kalbar, Queensland, and Enid Frances, née Sydney Jones. Her father was killed during World War II [by a lion, according to Christine France; in a raid, according to P. J. Greville, Australian Dictionary of Biography]. Later her mother married Ivan Lewis of Queensland. Anne boarded at Frensham, Mittagong then studied at East Sydney Technical College in 1938-41 under William Dobell and Frank Medworth . As a student of ESTC she won second prize in the student design competition for a dress material using an Aboriginal pattern at the 1941 'Australian Aboriginal Art and Its Application’ exhibition at David Jones Art Gallery, organised by the Australian Museum. (Other exhibitors included Frances Burke – fabrics – and Violet Mace – brown bowls and trays on which were black natives hunting, dancing and carrying out their domestic duties.)

Anne boarded at Merioola, a house in Rosemont Avenue, Woollahra run by Chicka Lowe that was home to a number of artists in the 1940s including Mitty Lee Brown, Kate O’Brien and Alec Murray (see Christine France, Merioola). Mary Edwards lived nearby. In 1942 Anne had a solo show at the Macquarie Galleries and in 1943 showed five works in Victoria’s Contemporary Art Society Show. She wrote and illustrated stories for Home (1942), Australia: National Journal (1940s) and Australia Week-end Book 1 (1942, p.163, illustrating 'Australia from Egypt’ by Marjorie Barnard) and the Sydney Morning Herald (1946). Her weird 'Fable’ about a woman’s murdered husband who lived on in the body of her baby fathered by his murderer was published in Home (2 February 1942), while 'The Ticket’ – an illustrated short story with the dramatic opening sentence, 'Mrs. Burnett was lying dead in the bedroom’ – appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 28 December 1946.

By then Wienholt was in New York. In 1944 she had won the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship and, without waiting for the war to end, she and runner-up Mitty Lee Brown sailed for New York. Anne studied at the Art Students League (Yashuo Kuniyoshi’s Class of 1945), at the Brooklyn Museum Fine Art School (Rufino Tamayo Class, Winter 1947-48) and at Atelier 17, the experimental graphic workshop of Stanley William Hayter (Winter 1948, ’49 and ’50). She visited England, France and Italy in 1947. She married the cabinetmaker and furniture designer Masato Takashige in America. They had a daughter who has accompanied Anne to Australia for regular six-monthly visits since November 1950.

In 1968 the family moved to Kingston, Jamaica and Anne taught drawing at the Jamaican School of Art. Since 1970 she has lived and worked in California. Despite her long residence in the USA – where she has had at least ten solo shows – Wienholt has continued to exhibit in Australia, having had solo shows at Sydney’s Irving Sculpture Gallery (1984), David Jones Gallery (1989), Adelaide’s Greenhill Galleries (1990) and others. Her work has been included in numerous group shows in Australia, Jamaica and the USA. Although she still draws, she has considered herself primarily a sculptor for many years, working directly in wax and casting in bronze. Her lifetime friend, Rosemary Bolton (the poet Rosemary Dobson), owns a major work. Regardless of medium, the quirky, allusive, subversive wit remains unchanged.

Writers:

Kerr, Joan

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

1992