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Anna Pinkster

Biography

My work reflects my obsession with drawing and painting the human figure and my fascination with observing and describing people in their environment. I have traveled extensively looking at the similarities and differences between cultures and tribes, observing figures and endeavouring to capture the interaction of people with both others around them and the space that they move through. I am most inspired by working from life where subjects are captured in a moment of expressive movement and shape and form are captured in a fluid simplicity of line.

My most recent works focus on people on the beach, figures of all shape and size, families and friendship groups in joyful and uninhibited play and whilst I draw and paint individuals, the compositional arrangement forms a pattern, narratives emerge and the individuals form a whole. 

My work has always been concerned with the fusing of visual language and subject; I endeavour to give the mark or shape its own autonomy yet still be read as part of the subject. I generally work in oils and charcoal, blocking out backgrounds with thick brushstrokes, allowing charcoal lines to show through the paint in order to create a sense of energy, movement and immediacy.

Whether inspired by my own community or those that I find on my travels, my work offers an insight into the essence of a culture and the individuals that create it.

In 1994 Anna Pinkster was awarded a first class BA degree in Fine Art by the West Surrey College of Art and Design. Since then she has exhibited largely in London, Bath and Somerset. In 2018 she was awarded the Prince of Wales portrait drawing prize at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition and was elected a member of the Bath Society of Artists.
So far this year (2020) she has been selected for the SWA (Society of Women Artists) annual exhibition, the NEAC annual exhibition, and the Pastel Society exhibition where she received the Anthony J Lester Art Critic Award.