Anna Woodward (b.1998) is a London-based artist and curator. She obtained a MA in Fine Art from City and Guilds of London Art School. Her practice looks to create fantasy worlds that sit between utopia and dystopia, creating a space that is beyond the realm of the viewer's reality. A space where biomorphic forms grow freely yet there is still evidence of the human made. Woodward’s works predominantly in oil on linen, working in a series of layers to create intensity, perspective and depth. Being particularly interested in ways of painting and drawn to contemporary artists such as Julie Curtiss and Jane Hayes Greenwood, whose practices sit between the surreal and the skill of the artist. Working in a series of layers that are broken into different painting languages, from the loose washes of oil paint to highly rendered and voluptuous biomorphic forms that snake their way around the painting, and metallic rods that are engulfed by the biomorphic forms. All these aspects come together to create an overgrown and wild world. Furthermore, there is an aspect of obsession and repetition in the way that Woodward approaches painting and her subject, evidenced through the repeated motifs and finite detail found within the work.
Solo exhibitions include A Cloned Realm, Galeria Duarte Sequeira, Portugal (2023); Myth, Artisan Space, London, UK (2019).
Selected group exhibitions include Tomorrow is Tomorrow is Tomorrow, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London (2023); Second Expression, Split Gallery, London (2022); City and Guilds of London Art School MA Show, London (2022); The Reality in Whytch you create, Studio West, London (2022); With Love, II, curated by Mark Connoly, Paint Talk, Online (2021); Reframing, Sevenoaks Kaleidoscope Art Gallery, Sevenoaks (2021); Euphoric, curated by Josephine Bailey, Online (2021); City and Guilds of London Art School 2020 Graduates Exhibition, Oxo Tower Barge House, London (2021); Domesticity and The Feminine, curated by Josephine Bailey, Online (2021).
Highlights and residences
Anna Woodward won The Freelands Foundation Painting Prize in 2020.