Anna Marrow has been working as a printmaker, illustrator and image-maker for 20 years. She studied Fine Art in Bristol and then Communication Design at Central Saint Martins, specialising in illustration. She now draws at home and makes her prints at Spike Print Studio in Bristol, working with household paints, biros, fine liners, pencil crayons and screen print. Most of her prints begin as biro and ink drawings in sketch books. They are developed into collages, and later become screen prints.
Anna makes surprising, sometimes humorous or alarming images by combining mundane objects and environments with exotic creatures and characters. Pin-pointing a specific moment in time, she is often drawn to objects from her childhood such as 70s televisions, radios and cars, which all feature heavily in her work, as do urban and suburban landscapes.
' I love architecture, particularly Victorian and contemporary brutalist buildings. A combination of the two seems to echo most of the places I have lived; Liverpool, London and Bristol. My main concerns are detail, specific drawing, surprising colour, composition, and believable story telling. I love the craft of drawing and think it is more important than ever in our fast paced digital age - to take time out and observe carefully. I enjoy the innocence and romance of old musicals and like to draw the characters from them. Birds also feature in my work I am drawn to them because of their contrasting features of soft feathers and sharp beaks, and their fascinating details. More recently I have been looking at people who are attempting to fly. Divers, wing walkers, synchronised swimmers and evil kenievel will all be appearing soon so watch this space…'