Anne Cooper Dobbins Weiss

Anne Cooper Dobbins Weiss, Noted Bucks County Painter, dead at 73.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky and long time resident of Upper Bucks County, Anne Cooper Dobbins Weiss died on December 12th after a brief illness. Her work, however, lives on. It is in the Library of Congress, the J. P. Speed Museum in Louisville, the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, as well as in private collections throughout the country.

For many years, Anne Dobbins Weiss was a charismatic figure in the art world. For her, painting was a way of seeing, a device for opening doors to the soul. Her powerful, enigmatic paintings of people blazed new trails in portraiture. Her flower paintings exhibit the same raw power as her portraits. Paintings of tulips, iris, lilies, Gerber daisies and the like are alive with a kind of inner light, an effect achieved by her technique of layering color over color.

Her accomplishments were many and varied. A graduate of the George Washington University School of Fine Art, she was the recipient of a Fulbright grant and a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony. She taught art in the New York City public schools. She was a designer of fabrics and wallpapers. She contributed articles on design, decor and crafts to House Beautiful and Family Circle. And she was a mentor to many younger Bucks County artists. She was a maker, a creator, a tireless explorer of new ideas and new approaches to her subjects. Her hands were never still. When she wasnʼt painting, she was making jewelry, taking other peopleʼs discarded “junk” and transforming it into wearable objects of startling originality.

Friends describe her as the original Renaissance woman, bringing the same passion and fervor to interior design, gardening and flower arranging as she did to painting. She loved clothing, color, accessories, jewelry, ornament. She was, herself, a living, breathing work of art.

Anne Dobbins Weiss is survived by her husband, the writer, Sanford Weiss, and her two brothers, Innes and Stephen Dobbins of Louisville, Kentucky.

Her friends are organizing a memorial and celebration of her life. The date and place will be announced soon. Funeral arrangements are under the direction of the Holcombe-Fisher Funeral Home, 147 Main Street, Flemington, NJ. Please visit www.holcombefisher.com for further information, or to send condolences.