After graduating college in 2013, Anna took a job as a railcar porter on a westbound train. It was from that blurred train window that she first witnessed the shimmering sage, ragged mountains, and sun-bleached deserts of the West. Hailing from the soft forests of Pennsylvania, she’d never experienced a landscape so boundless. The magnetic pull she felt was undeniable. Promptly after that trip, she moved to Granby Colorado where the mountains and high desert became her new home.
Putting her Journalism and Fine Art degree on pause, she chased a seasonal lifestyle of ski-bumming and adventure tour-guiding across the American West. This era allowed for greater exploration of wild lands and ignited a passion for backcountry skiing, rock climbing and mountain biking, giving her new ways to experience the landscape.
In 2018, she dedicated herself to the path to becoming a professional artist in Park City, Utah. Painting allows her to share not only the beauty of the West, but the sublime joy and freedom only found in true wilderness. Her deep connection to the outdoors fuels her work and gives a greater purpose to her outdoor adventures.
She currently shows at CreatePC and The Kimball Art Center, and participates in art festivals such as The Kimball Arts Festival and Art Fair Jackson Hole.
Statement
My process begins on adventures in wild places. First, memorizing the topography with my physical body—whether hiking, biking, skiing or climbing—and then immortalizing that experience in paint.
Beginning on site (typically sitting in the dirt) I capture important details in a small sketchbook before finalizing a larger piece at my home studio. Using thin layers of medium, I try to work swiftly to keep the essence of a place, without getting lost in the details.
This collection of oil paintings is a story born of red rock cliffs and bright blue skies. Of adventures through sinuous canyons and sagebrush expanses. From moments of exhaustion and stillness, I feel the raw truth of time and space, reminded that our lives are but a fleeting wind against stone that has stood quietly for millennia.
The desert is a place that evokes both strength and fragility. Historically undervalued, these spaces continue to be vulnerable to mining and cheap development. By sharing these unmarred landscapes, my hope is that more people recognize their value. As irreplaceable cathedrals of geology and history, these lands have the power to make us feel both small and infinite.
Using vivid colors and exaggerated lines, these pieces capture the mystical magnetism of the desert‚ a place that often feels like another world. Where the harsh terrain can be a welcomed refuge, and one can be filled to the brim with a vast emptiness.