Between

Opening Reception: June 27th, 6-8 pm

Watch the interview with Anna about her work, residency and upcoming exhibition.

Anna’s work is based primarily on the examination of architecture, and the structures and furniture within a space.

Working with fine tip black markers and gouache, Anna creates a new “between” or “grey space” that allows the viewer to relate their own memories to the drawings, as she turns once-functional, architectural perspectives of housing into new, multi-layered fictional spaces of memory and place. Through cross hatching and intense detail, she creates depth within her art while also allowing each layer to merge with the next, to achieve an imagined space.

Recently, Anna has begun to focus many of her drawings on furniture and its surrounding space. Although each piece of furniture is generally unique to its own home, these drawings create a recognizable, and comforting subject matter surrounded by blank space, the intense black areas created with gouache. This blank space allows for viewer reflection, almost a resting point, as to contrast the chaotic detail and nature of her layered drawings.

Anna’s layered drawings, inspired by photographs of older homes and interiors, as well as her own family’s cottage, provoke memory and the ability to relate to the space. By layering interior and exterior architectural views, leaving certain areas unfilled with detail, a level of abstraction is achieved. While the subject matter of architecture and furniture is still apparent, the somewhat dreamlike result of the drawings is unique to each piece.

Anna draws influence from the works of Julie Mehretu and recently has become interested in the home of Carl Larsson, a famous Swedish artist. In this exhibition, many of Anna’s smaller, colourful drawings are based upon the furniture in Larsson’s home. These smaller drawings, each piece of furniture surrounded by its own vibrant colour, act to not only elicit memory, but to examine the effect of colour compared to empty black space, as visible in the larger drawings in this show.