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A.R. Ammons: Poet-Painter
Watercolors that are "complex, indescribably beautiful, and often visionary."
--John Hallmark Neff
--John Hallmark Neff
Watercolor – Memoir package sale ends April 30.
Two A.R. Ammons watercolor collections that are on sale through April 30 are listed below this text. The first is specially offered via an ad in the Columbus County News-Reporter. Below images & descriptions of those 45 watercolors is a second collection that was remains from an Archie-100th birthday celebration staged in Fountain in February.
Prices begin at $100 and are revealed individually after clicking on the BUY NOW button
Each original Ammons watercolor selected from these two collections comes with a copy of Emily Herring Wilson’s superb memoir, When I Go Back to My Home Country, about her decades-long friendship with Archie; and a collectible copy of the first North Carolina Literary Review, published in 1992.
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Why a Poet Paints
In Changing Things, a chapbook published in 1981 by Stuart Wright’s Winston-Salem-based Palaemon Press, Ammons explains the origins of his artistic output: “During Christmas vacation in 1976, I got the notion, which I had had passingly but often before, to try watercolors.” He would continue with that “notion” through 1977 and into 1978, and would return to it again in 1987.
He continues:
I was attracted to the possibility of bringing together in one visual consideration the arbitrariness of pure coincidence with the necessity of the essential, the moving from the free, as the work of art begins, through the decision of patterns and possibility, and into and through the demands of the necessary, the unavoidable, the inevitable.
He also admits to an anger that motivated his art: “I was angry, sizzlingly angry for whatever reasons.”
One of the 126 copies printed of Changing Things is in the Stuart Wright collection at ECU and is also online here.
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Ammons watercolors are featured prominently in this excellent exploration of his poem “Cascadilla Falls,” produced by Lisa New for the PBS series Poetry in America.
Princeton University’s six Ammons watercolors are shown here, accompanied by a fine essay.
A.R. Ammons: Watercolors showed in Chicago at the Poetry Foundation in 2020. Read Chris Miller’s review of that show for NewCityArt.
View the online collection of Ammons watercolors at his alma mater, Wake Forest University.
Archie’s Home Country Facebook page is here.
ECU has a dozen of Archie’s watercolors, gifted by Reid and Susan Overcash.
Elizabeth Mills outlined Archie’s artistic output in “An Image for Longing,” published in Epoch 52.2 (2003):
From 1977 until 1993, he entered his work in twelve separate exhibits at sites from the Johnson Art Museum at Cornell to the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York City, where four of his paintings appeared in the show “Literary Vision,” along with [others]. He also exhibited his paintings in North Carolina, at the Reynolda Museum of American Art in Winston-Salem and at the University of North Carolina’s Morehead Gallery in Chapel Hill. More recently, in October 2002, the Charlotte and Philip Hanes Art Gallery at Wake Forest University, Ammons’s alma mater, presented an exhibit of fifty of the poet’s paintings; watercolors from that show subsequently appeared on the March and August 2003 covers of Poetry. [both issues are sold out.]
Mills also wrote a short piece introducing Ammons’ art to the Poetry Foundation; unfortunately, the slide show link that accompanies this piece is no longer active.
–Alex Albright
January 17, 2026
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A.R. Ammons: Poet-Painter
by John Hallmark Neff
When I moved to Winston-Salem from Chicago in 2001, I was unaware of A.R. Ammons, one of our great twentieth century poets, his long tenure at Cornell, and his North Carolina roots.
That came later, with the first of four privileged invitations to review the legacy of watercolor paintings he had given to his close friends Emily and Ed Wilson. In 1976, Ammons had begun to paint intently, a creative outlet for his anger and anxiety without the expectations due his poetry.
An art historian, I had seen millions of images of artwork. To encounter paintings so unfamiliar and compelling was rare and exciting. It still is today, an experience akin to following Ammons as he discovers further dimension to his creative intelligence / imagination: imagery cosmic, microcosmic, down home. From tentative beginnings into remarkable fluency, Ammons achieved paintings complex, indescribably beautiful, and often visionary.
–John Hallmark Neff is an art historian and consultant. He taught at Williams College, directed five museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and built collections for the former First National Bank of Chicago and the MacArthur Foundation. A Matisse scholar, he has published also on Anselm Kiefer, Robert Irwin, and Agnes Denes among others.
Sizes of the original Ammons watercolors in this collection are indicated individually. Most are signed with a date of creation. Purchase of each watercolor includes a copy of Emily Herring Wilson's memoir "When I Go Back to My Home Country."
The 100 watercolors in this collection are 14" x 20" on watercolor paper & signed by the artist; most also indicate a date of completion, 1977, 1978, or 1987. The 19 that have watercolors on both sides are designated with a "DS" prefix for what I believe is the primary side.
The five watercolors in Group A are signed by the artist. Unless otherwise noted, they are on 24" x 18" Arches paper.
The three watercolors in Group B are signed by the artist and individually sized.
The ten watercolors in Group C are matted, signed by the artist and dated 1983. Each is painted on the back of a 4 3/4" x 6 1/4" gallery announcement card for a group show that included Ammons watercolors, "Recent Paintings," at the Ridge House Gallery, Lansing, New York, September 18-30, 1983. Individually priced.
The 10 watercolors in Group D are signed by the artist and dated 1977. Unless otherwise noted, they are painted on watercolor paper and are 12 1/4" x 9."
$375 each
The two double-sided watercolors in Group E are from 1977, each on 12 1/4" x 9" watercolor paper. The reverse sides are not signed. $330 each.
The eleven watercolors in Group F are signed by the artist and dated 1977. They are on 10 1/4" by 7" watercolor paper. Priced individually.
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