Product Review

Anne Taintor is an artist whose themes deal with domestic stereotypes, as viewed through the lens of mid-century advertisements typically found in publications such as Ladies Home Journal and Life. Juxtaposing these images with tongue-in-cheek captions, her work serves as a commentary on the stereotypes of women popularized in the 1940s and 1950s. She has been credited by some as being a pioneer in the pairing of mid-century imagery with modern slogans.

The Anne Taintor Story

Anne graduated from Harvard in 1977 with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies. After college, she focused on collage, and her work always incorporated a subtle humor and playfulness. For years, AnneÕs art was more of a sideline than a full-time occupation. But in 1985, she was a single mother searching for a way to spend more time at home with her daughter than her job in cartography permitted, and she began to develop a line of collaged pins and magnets. The new collages combined vintage images with AnneÕs own interpretation of what these men and women might really be thinking. They were instantly a hit with AnneÕs customers, though it took a little longer for her to be brave enough to Òquit her day jobÓ.

In 1999, with her daughter away at college, Anne and her husband moved to a tiny town (population 80) in Northcentral New Mexico. She spent 12 blissful years in NM balancing growing her business with healthy doses of hiking, swimming & camping. Anne was elated to return to her home state of Maine in 2011 in order to spend more time with granddaughters and other family and to re-kindle her love of gardening and shoveling snow. She now lives and works in an eclectic antique house in Portland and continues to cherish making all you smart women and men smile.