Ever wandered around a city and felt the tension between nature and urban life; a constant push and pull where construction meets nature?
Urban artist Anna Carll has shifted from vibrant figurative art to abstract pieces that explore the intersection of city life and nature. Her process is deeply layered, using repurposed materials that balance positive and negative space in her work. The initial chaos gives way to exciting details, using organic shapes, grids and fragments, pieces that invite viewers to pause and reflect, just as civilisations are built on top of each other creating a rich history of effort to exist.
Anna's urban series examines all aspects of this concept through colour and balance, layer by layer, with a bird's eye view.
Where It Began
“It all began in South Florida, where I grew up,” says Anna of her love of art and vibrant colour.
“Sarasota, Florida is a very tropical place on the western coast, and growing up, there were lots of saturated colours. I also grew up in the Catholic Church looking at beautiful stained glass windows with lots and lots of colour. All those influences took me forward into actually pursuing, initially, a graphic design and illustration career, at the University of Florida. I travelled to the northern part of the state for that, and then decided to go ahead and emigrate to Atlanta, Georgia and just keep going further north to be in an urban environment.”
Chaos and Order
Anna’s art has a way of moving from chaos to order. “I grew up in a big family,” Anna explains, “there was a lot of chaos and a lot of colour, so I'm used to chaos, and studios are pretty much a chaotic environment to work within, no matter what your particular practice is.
When you're involved in a creative moment, there is quite a mess, no matter what our medium is. So chaos suits me well in those initial phases. But then I also like to seek order in organisation and really look at the spatial plane.
Starting with chaos in my work and then finding order is very much what we would do in the graphic design industry, because you start with brainstorming and thinking about concepts for clients. Out of that chaos, you start developing various campaigns that would work for those particular industries. With everything that I did in graphic design, the designs always had a destination, so you always had to think forward through that chaos. It was really natural for me to just take that mode of thinking into the fine art realm.”
Abstraction
Anna’s art has moved more and more towards abstraction as her career has progressed.
“My early work, when I went into painting, was what I would call figurative abstractions. So partial figures, partial abstract environments that those figures embodied or lived within. A lot of it was composed of abstract shapes like you would see in stained glass windows. That early influence of the Catholic Church definitely moved forward right into my early painting career.
Everywhere I've been in my life and who I've been, all of that creates the framework for who you are as an artist. Then, as I got more into it, after about a decade into painting, I started exploring non-representational or total abstraction due to my mother developing dementia. I was struggling with trying to cope with the changes in my relationship with her, and the erosion of her mind, which so many people go through with family members.
That got me thinking about erosion and the life cycle, and this was the basis behind what ultimately became the urban series, how we grow and evolve as human beings, as well as the towns, the cities that we create.”
Technology and Art
Anna has never been shy of utilising modern tech in her artistic process, “Because I was in the graphic design industry, one of the things you worked within was the Photoshop program for the past 30 years,” Anna says. “It's a program that I've been using from its infancy, and I’ve seen all of the changes throughout the years, and it just has such a deep, rich opportunity through layering.
What I love about Photoshop is that you build images in layers just like you would with collage or paint. To have that combination of digital and analog coming together with mixed media pieces is very appealing to me, and that's why it's just so easy for me to work with creating designs in Photoshop and then translate that into the studio and building the layers that I do in the process.
I'll usually start with photographs of infrastructure grunge textures. Sometimes, I will do some things on a gelli plate, and I'll either use it directly from the gel plating, or if I have an interesting pattern I like, I'll photograph it so I have it in my image library, and then I'll use it again and again.”
Social Media
When it comes to the lure of social media, Anna has a disciplined approach. “I'm very self-disciplined because I had to be to run a design studio for sixteen years,” she explains.
“You develop the ability to focus on projects because you have to, you're under deadline, you're under pressure in the advertising and design industry, so you have to be super focused. So that background translated into my fine art practice. I also live alone, I don't have a spouse, and I don't have children. So I know that there are artists who are struggling to find the time in their studio, but my life is set up basically to be really career-based, and because I have that ability, I literally just turn my phone off. It's in another room when I'm in the studio.
I have scheduled times during the week when I look at social media and post on social media. I only post twice a week. I'm of German ancestry, so I love systems and organisation and engineering. I actually use my Notes app, and within my Notes app, I have all these different titles of different types of posts that I do, from studio happenings to finished work to workshop news, and each one of these has captured within them the hashtags that need to be for that particular type of post.”
With this in mind, Anna has some sage advice for young artists about the online world.
“I would say be careful,” she advises. “It's so easy to see what's going on in social media and the influences. None of us live in a vacuum. We're going to see stuff on the internet. We're going to see stuff on social media. It's up to artists to absorb those influences but don't set out to just directly copy. You really need to use your own voice and take in what you see. Think about how it can apply to what you're doing and what your story is.”
About Anna Carll
Anna Carll was born in 1960 and is the youngest child of a large German-American family with five other siblings. Raised in Sarasota, FL, Anna’s early influences were imprinted in a tropical landscape with picturesque beaches, boatyards and an urban centre. In 1984, Anna received her BA from the University of Florida, after which she relocated to Atlanta, GA, where she lived and worked for 16 years. In the summer of 2000, Anna moved to north central Georgia and spent 12 years honing her art practice under the influence of the beautiful Appalachians in the Blue Ridge area. Anna now calls Chattanooga, TN, home.