"The road to the creative passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.”

 

Ernest Becker

 

Anna completed a BA hons degree in Art Education at Bretton Hall College in 1997. 20 years later during a difficult period working as a mental health nurse, Anna found herself being drawn towards art again. Driven by the need to escape and feel in control, Anna started to draw moths repetitively and eventually created her first piece called Cucullia argentea, a pen and watercolour illustration of 24 individually drawn moths.

Anna’s need to control continued and she introduced the concept of repetition into her technique and began using dots to create her images. She then began to limit her materials to 3 watercolours and her subject areas from 5 to now just 2, Birds and Insects.

Subconsciously Anna had created a stress-free style of art for herself.

Anna’s bird compositions evolved quite accidentally, when drawing a black headed gull. Feeling frustrated with the disproportion of her drawing Anna cut the gull’s body off and started to experiment with composition of just the gull’s head.
Anna draws her inspiration from the style and colours of both Japanese woodblock and Victorian natural history prints. She uses a 0.03mm and 0.05mm graphics pen, watercolours and varnish.

Anna is now a more relaxed mental health nurse and lives in York with her partner and 2 children.