Ann Tanksley’s work tells a story. At times it is an autobiography of her inner spirit melded with her experiences and travels; at other times it is about social injustices and the universal plight of rural workers; yet others, she retells stories that have been told by others as she did in her visual interpretations of the prose of Zora Neal Hurston. She sees herself as a ”social commentator” who would like people to understand her through her work and to understand her point of view. This is perhaps why she has chosen to communicate through the figures of the painting rather though abstract expression, even though her method is not unlike that of the Abstract Expressionists.