Anne Taintor is an artist from Lewiston, Maine who received the Maine Women's Fund Tribute to Women in Industry Award at the 2013 Leadership Luncheon.
The idea for Anne Taintor, Inc. came to Taintor in the early 1980s, when she was rifling through some vintage women’s magazines and found herself wondering what the perfect-seeming women shown on page after page were really thinking. Could that beautifully coiffed, pert housewife be as content—and vacuous—as she seemed? Taintor doubted it. She began to imagine their true inner thoughts (i.e. “I’m so happy it’s happy hour”). Soon she was pasting text onto images to create jewelry, magnets, and other products, which she began to sell. This was the beginning of Anne Taintor, Inc. The quirky, deadpan captions struck an immediate chord with the women who saw them. As Taintor’s sister Ellen says, “I think Anne really taps into what women are thinking. What she says is what people would like to say, but are too polite.”
Interview by Susan Kimball. Video by David Meiklejohn.
