Call Sharon Louden an artist. She makes prints, large installation pieces and sculptures and has received commissions for public art. Louden also paints, draws and has organized a screening at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., featuring abstract animation and film from 1970 to today. Her latest animation — she scans her brush strokes into a computer and her colleague Brian Clyne helps fabricate the animation in programs such as After Effects or Flash — will premiere at the National Gallery in September.

“I’m 49 years old and it took me almost 30 years to get that out of my system,” Louden said, “the idea that I had to identify as a [certain] type of artist.”