Anne Pollard James (b. 1972) is a contemporary oil painter working in Oklahoma. Largely self-taught, her work is joyful reclamation. Through provocation, humor, and strength, she examines equality and personal truths through a contemporary figurative lens. She shows the complex ways we navigate in the spaces that surround us, and emboldens women to take up space. Anne’s paintings are loud, hard, soft, sweet and sharp and always through the lens of the spectacular strength of women. Anne’s work has been included in group exhibitions in Oklahoma, New York City, California.Her work has been featured on the cover of numerous literary journals and her painting Pretty Mouth is cover art for the book This Strange Garment by Nicole Callihan (Terrapin Press, 2023) Most recently, she is focused on The Delight Project: Art & Archive, a series of ten monumentally scaled paintings of Oklahoma women that radically reclaims ownership of the gaze.