Today we’d like to introduce you to Anna Moran.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I am from Long Island, NY. I received my B.A. from The University of North Georgia. I have found my joy as a full-time traveling artist, selling out my last three showings between October 2017 through January 2018, and most recently being awarded 2nd place by the Beverly Hills Art Show. I have been blessed to travel the country working from my home base in Atlanta, Ga.
I have always been interested in art and design; my parents encouraged me from a young age to explore it once they noticed I had a creative eye. I attended art school at the University of North Georgia. It was a beautiful, inspiring campus, and I met a few of my closest friends there. I found myself frustrated by the education; a majority of my professors were more interested in the narrative and conceptual element of the work than the skill and quality. Of course, I believe in the importance of symbolic and conceptual elements within art, but you must learn the language before you can tell a story. It was a breeding ground for exhibitionistic students who were not interested in pushing themselves outside of what they already knew. I realized that many students were so romanticizing the idea of being an “artist” that they had no interest in the art itself.
All too late, I realized that I had such a desire to be classically trained, to learn those rules that would ultimately free my art, but learned that art school had become something else entirely. So those four years were disappointing for me at times but also helped me to hone my interests. My final two years there, I dedicated to teaching myself classical sculpting and drawing. Learning and studying the figure pouring over any old masters resources I could find on technique. For my senior capstone show, I decided upon a life-size figurative sculpture. My professors were not happy about my choice to bypass a more conceptually engaging project, but I was determined to properly execute a beautiful female figure. They denied my proposal, writing it off as too ambitious, encouraging me to do a group of smaller figures that could fit into a narrative, but I did it anyway. You could say a part of me enjoyed being the only student who was contested for being too ambitious, but it made things interesting.
Please tell us about your art.
I am captivated with timeless design and using God’s nature as a source, not only as conceptual inspiration but for material inspiration as well. During a time where liberation the king, and the belief that we are capable of freeing ourselves from ideas of our historical past in order live in a realm where we are our own philosophers, many young artists seem to be unsuccessfully grasping for originality while leaving historical techniques and ideas by the wayside. I believe this is naive and ultimately damaging, forgetting that our foundations are why we exist the way we do; devotion to the past, only enriches us with meaning in our present. For example; subordination and submission have lost all value in this age of liberation when it is quite the opposite. As the author Michael Knowles points out, Jesus did not come to earth as a liberated man he comes as a servant, subservient to the will of his father, acting as a sacrifice for all mankind. What a gift of selfless love, where we’ve traded it – in this ironic revolution of “self-love” and turned our back on everything which makes us original in the first place. We are children of God, each endowed with gifts to glorify him in ways that no one else can, not our own god where doing “whatever works for you.” To lose this meaning is to lose all meaning. I am looking to go directly back to the deepest roots, the roots of creation. As Rolling Stone magazine so accurately summed up the unfortunate view of western modernity, the burning of the cathedral was a liberation as it was “overburdened with meaning.” We have abandoned our premise, leaving us as void, selfish, and once again, grasping for originality.
Primarily, I look to bring both the materials and subject matter of my work back to a primal place. I am interested in building a work of art that I could essentially create within nature or out in the wilderness with cotton, pine, mud, and my hands. I thicken my paint to create a mud-like body and texture, drawing inspiration from God’s creation of Adam and Eve as told in the book of Genesis and John, He uses mud to bring forth both life and sight. My work is an ongoing experiment with the female and figurative form, exploring the timeless romanticism with contour line drawings. I’m looking to boil the form down to its essence, forming gestural figures, moving the eye from one curve to another, as artist Steve Huston states “beautifully and truthfully.” I am intrigued with classic Greaco-Roman posing within a contemporary setting and in accordance with mother nature, look to create a work of art that is, in essence, raw.
Do you have any advice for other artists? Any lessons you wished you learned earlier?
First and foremost, learn the skill of drawing; it is the foundation from where all art springs. It is a difficult and time-consuming skill, but it also opens the most doors. Explore and learn as many techniques as possible, and read up on a variety of artists. My favorites are the old masters because they had little reliance on technology and solved problems that you can learn from. When it comes to inspiration, sometimes you need to block out the world! It is so easy to be inundated and overwhelmed by the most popular art and artists of the moment, but if you don’t give yourself time to be alone and formulate your own ideas, you will more than likely be influenced by someones else.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
My art can be viewed through my website at blondean.com, on Instagram @theannamichele, and in person at Buckhead Art & Company in Atlanta, Ga. I show bi-yearly at the Beverly Hills art show, every May and October.
Contact Info:
- Address: 288 Buckhead Ave NE, Atlanta, GA 30305
- Website: https://blondean.com/
- Phone: 6786179829
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: theannamichele
Image Credit:
Samuel Panasyuk
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