AMoCA New Acquisition — Marian Winsryg (RAiR 1974)
The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art recently acquired a new artwork by RAiR Alumni Marian Winsryg (RAiR 1974). This donation was a gift from the artist.
Marian Winsryg, Camelback Mountain, 1986-87, acrylic on linen, 65.25 x 103.5 in.
Read the artist’s statement for this painting:
"In 1962, my family purchased a home in Paradise Valley, Arizona—a 5-acre expanse of raw desert that once belonged to Robert Maytag, heir to the Maytag appliance fortune. This was no ordinary home. Maytag had moved to Phoenix in 1959 with his head full of memories from his African expeditions and dreams of founding a zoo. What he created instead, was a strange and intimate menagerie—a suburban ark nestled in the Sonoran Desert.
The house was a strange blend of wild ambition and domestic life. Echoes of animals that once resided, remain embedded in its very structure. What was once a gorilla’s cage off a former bedroom, became my parents’ sitting room. A bathroom with a two-way mirror that overlooked a two-tiger enclosure was converted into my sister’s room. A small enclosure, built for spider monkeys, was repurposed into a wet bar off the dining area.
At night, giant African toads appeared then disappeared under the patio foundation. Tigers, zebras, elephants, chimpanzees, alligators, and giant Chiricahua frogs were once part of this recent desert landscape; their wild presence imprinted upon both the architecture and memories of this space. Long after these animals were gone, traces of their lives lingered—reminders of a time when this house was a sanctuary for both human and animal inhabitants.
In this painting, animals lounge not in cages, but within the cross-sectional Japanese style isometric confines of a home. The surreal overlap between domestic life and untamed wilderness metaphorically reminds us of how we adapt, tame, and oftentimes forget the wildness that shaped us. As I revisited this forgotten zoo, I traced the delicate, often absurd boundaries between myth and lived experience, between the stories I was told and the truths that I remember.
From a time living there, I could picture a cottontail rabbit, carefully swimming across our pool, desperately trying to elude the watchful eyes of our dogs. Beside the Olympic-sized pool that once housed alligators, was the aviary, housing exotic birds that never quite adapted to the desert heat.
The property later became a refuge for unwanted creatures: orphaned quail, abandoned parakeets, and desert lizards which roamed freely between cracks in the walls. My grandmother had a dream of toucans flying out of our fireplace. These fragments, part memories, part myths, serve to remind us how we both shape and are shaped by the spaces we occupy.
Camelback Mountain was first painted at the Roswell Artist in Residence Program in 1972. This painting traveled with me to my various teaching positions in Arizona and California before finally being completed in 1986 in San Francisco.”
— Marian Winsryg
Learn more about the artist at Marian’s website