Collection: Anna Ryan Drew
A FEW THINGS ABOUT THE ARTIST
1. What do you do when you’re not making art? (Day job etc...).
Art is my day job. It is my full time purpose. I also am a mother.
2. Why do you make art?
I make art to reflect the human condition. To be the image that needs no words to accompany it. Just the art and the viewer. (Below is portion of my artist statement.) I make art for the sister whose Bipolar brother committed suicide. For the doctor that could not stop it. For the mother who blames herself for it. I make art to build out the space in my mind of exuberance, love, healing, and despair. So you may enter that room, and the art will hold you in every moment that you may recognize yourself. I make art for the moment that turns into a movement. Crown on.
3. What inspires you?
Moonshot thinking, and prolific creativity. My viewers who connect a larger movement with my work. Who write to me about their newly diagnosed Bipolar daughter and how much my work speaks to the hope they have for her. I am inspired by the stories that affirm my purpose and confirm that there is a bright side to mental illness. That artistic creativity and mental discourse, from Van Gogh to Winston Churchill, should not be held in shadows of mystery and darkness, instead celebrated in the light.
4. What/who are your influences?
Currently Ashley Longshore and other female contemporaries that are taking the art conversation to a different level of divine feminism. My sister and fellow contemporary photographer, Maggie Adare Drew. My mixed media artist/mother Nancy Swan Drew. The Art School for artists and creatives, founded by former lawyer, artist and Master Life Coach Leah Campbell Badertscher. Leah has an awesome podcast called The Art School. Great for creativity and growth.
5. If you could meet anyone dead or alive who would it be?
I would like to meet Joan Mitchell and be in her studio.