“…I explore the glitter and banality of fame and pop culture.” —Fowler

Anna Fowler was born in 1979 in Bradford, England; living in this small town she admits that not much happens there. Even though, she feels fortunate to live in a city which is known for another local talent, David Hockney, and also because Bradford is situated only 20 minutes from big city Leeds — where she pursued her studies. In 1998, she enrolled in an art foundation course at Bradford College and then in an illustration course at Stockport College. And only in 2000, did she begin her studies at Leeds Metropolitan University — graduating with a BA (Hons.) in Graphic Arts and Design. Currently, Anna works as a freelance illustrator for local companies.

From the early age of 15, Anna has been involved in commercial illustration. She started with a two-week work experience at home with her father (a freelance illustrator). Anna explains, “My dad showed me his own technique of sketching out the image in coloured pencil, then markers and gouache on a plastic surface and a spirit to mix the colours. It enabled me to create the fake, airbrushed, ‘too perfect’ look that is often used in advertising imagery. I don’t like to elaborate too much as it is a well kept secret between my dad and I!” Her artwork is indeed catchy, colourful, and sharp in detail — highlighting fashionable characters, fast food and tasty fruits, and a lot more. But before its aesthetics spellbinds us, we need to “look beyond style to finding the substance.” Anna’s work began when she saw “It Girls” (people known for being famous socialites) getting out of their limos at a film premier in London. She thought to herself, “If they can be stars then so could the friends I was with at the time.” So she reinvented and stylized her friends by photographing and renaming them into characters such as ‘Dolores and Dave.’ And that is how her work was born. She exhibited these paintings around bars in Leeds, where her newly stylized friend ‘Dolores’ made appearances. “My goal was to show how a normal person could be elevated to star status having been styled by someone else. I think it is a hopeless situation, when so-called ‘stars’ of today are unable to even dress themselves! In my paintings, I try to explore the glitter and banality of fame and popular culture.”

In her food paintings, some solely with fruits and meals and others of Anna eating; she creates different moods based on the color and form of each edible element. A study of sexuality of the object provided by classic and contemporary art, and media imagery. E.g. in “Strawberry-Sucker” a girl looks straight at us, nibbling and sucking on a strawberry. The character has an intense look which reveals innocence but also sexual desire. In another example, “Lemon,” shows us a girl biting down hard on a lemon making her eyes squeeze fiercely due to the sourness of taste. It may not be as sexual as the first but it definitely shows risk and dare. Anna represents food metaphorically, and in “Burger-n-flies” she holds no exception. It is an image symbolizing a lifestyle accessory — fast food, a cheap and nasty product injected with value into advertising and marketing. “My loving interpretations of trashy fast food turn the most unglamorous of subjects into things of beauty.” And this occurs precisely in ads, making things desirable for the consumer society.

Anna’s present art series focus mainly on self-portraits. These pieces are intriguing as they are coincidentally similar to Cindy Sherman’s technique — i.e. the artist representing herself as main character of her photographs. Anna transforms herself into characters that seem familiar to us from our daily life, like a school girl drinking a soda in the afternoon sun, a preppy rich kid getting out of her Daddy-paid sports car, and a wannabe girl trying to dress hip like the other girls. Her scenarios seem clear and obvious like real instant photos, and they are prepared that way. She sometimes takes a quick photo or can take as long as seven hours to prepare a shot with props in the right location setting. And as you look closely into the painting, the story behind the protagnist seems obvious, but is it really? “I have produced my images from a certain point of view, but here are many layers to my work making it impossible for me to explain in full, which is why I paint. As the artist Duchamp said, ‘50% of the creative act is up to the viewer, not the artist.’” She additionally clarifies that Sherman hasn’t influenced her at all, because she just recently became acquainted with the artist’s work. There have been other people making the same comparison, although in reality Anna has always loved dressing up and experimenting with her image since childhood. When she was growing up, she even had an obsession with matching hair ribbons with bows on her knickers, and this was at the age of five. But, like many artists influenced from pop culture and the media (from Anna Fowler to Cindy Sherman and Andy Warhol), their source of inspiration explains the parallel tendency for certain themes and styles. Anna, like other pop artists, have been inspired by B-movies and television, film posters, billboard ads, record sleeves, old postcards, and other items collected over the years.

“A world within a world” is what Anna Fowler attempts to do; “I have created my own little world through my paintings where everything is just as I like it… Colourful, kitsch, ironic, pretty, nostalgic and a bit tragic.”