Anne Marie McNamara was raised in Tacoma, Washington. She moved to Seattle to attend University of Washington in 1973 and has stayed there. Her artistic mentor was Steve Fuller, Professor Emeritus at UW. She studied Sumi and watercolor with Fumiko Kimura. She is mostly self-taught.

            Anne’s medium is watercolor, but she often adds other media. One day, painting in La Conner, the wind tossed sand on her painting. Upon her request people bought sand from all over the world. She now also uses glass frits, sea glass, Dichroic glass, alpaca fur, cedar, palm and birch and other materials to make her art.

            In thinking about her work, she travels back in memory to when she was a toddler. One day she found her baby book and decided a pink crayon mark on the first page was a wonderful addition.  Her mother, not believing in hitting children, spanked her. The shock of her mother hitting her froze that memory in time. Years later, when she had her own toddler, Anne’s mother gave her the baby book. As she opened the book, she saw the pink crayon mark.  She remembered when she added the pink color it became one with the white background, not two separate colors. Now, after years of school, she saw the two different features of this page: a pink crayon line on a simple white page of the book. This theme permeates all her art work, even her representational works.

 Anne Marie has developed a style and framing technique to hang her work in a way that allows people to view the art in different ways by turning the art piece. This style of art is now called Turn Art™.

     Another aspect of her creative life is providing Energetic Space Clearing to change energy in troubled properties including using Feng Shui techniques. She has written a book called Earth Whisperer, The White Chick from Tacoma. It was her way of stating that energetic intuitive people are all around us and does not have to be some esoteric exotic path of knowing.

How it all began:

The Amazing Event of the Vibrational Energy Encounter

It was on November 11, 1985 that my life changed, and began to take me in a new direction. At that time I was a single mother with a budding teenager. My job was being a Juvenile Probation Counselor and I had been working with felons the last two years. My friend Barb and I were treating ourselves to a latte and a chocolate chip cookie at the B&O Café. It was a holiday and we were "vacationing" for a couple hours.
  
My "normal" world came to an abrupt end at eleven o'clock that morning. (Okay, if you were not paying attention that was 11/11 at 11.) I had just finished talking about my son and Barb was talking about one of her sons. As I listened I felt a vibrational current enter the top of my head and go through my body. This current traveled down both arms to my fingertips. I was holding a cup, the contents being about one-third full of a lukewarm latte. The cup shattered into tiny pieces. My favorite corduroy pants were drenched in light brown liquid. When I looked at my hands expecting to see blood I was shocked to see there were no cuts on my hands. As I looked down at the mess, I remembered the Memorex commercial about how the sound was so good in the quality of the cassette tape it would break a wine glass in tiny pieces when the opera singer hit the high note.  

Barb and I sat there stunned! What just happened? One of the owners of the coffee shop ran over and apologized profusely. He insisted on making me another latte. Of course, I accepted, after all, I am from Seattle. I laughed when I saw my replacement latte brought to me in a styrofoam cup. The owner was not taking any chances!  

As Barb and I tried to sort out what had happened, the discussion turned to the idea that this was a paranormal message. How to decipher it?  

As it happened, a young man seated at the next table joined in our discussion. The universe being friendly provided us with some answers. He told us he had recently been studying paranormal behavior at John F. Kennedy University in San Francisco, California. Naturally I had never heard of the school but Barb had. She said it had an excellent program. The young man was pleased to hear Barb had heard of his school. 

He proceeded to say that he was sure the glass breaking was some kind of paranormal sign and encouraged me to find a reputable psychic in the area. Now we were stuck. Barb and I thought about who might know a psychic in the area. Barb decided our South African friend, Penny might know.  She did not, but told us another friend, Betsy, did. Betsy was very helpful and directed me to Rev. Joan Smith. She was a minister and a psychic.  She told me it was significant, that I had a spiritual gift, and offered me guidance. 

Her artwork is a reflection of her world.