Anna Sudbina

Head In The Clouds - Large contemporary semi-abstract painting of a human body

2022

In Sudbina’s paintings, pieces of frayed reality are artfully combined with areas of pure gestural abstraction, forming her dynamic visual language. This contrast explores the relationship between actuality and human perception, physical space and a memory of it. Layer by layer, she builds tactile planes interrupted by calligraphic lines of ink. Through a mastery of surface and composition, Sudbina’s paintings imaginatively balance the language of abstraction with references to contemporary life seen through the prism of her artistic vision. Born in Moscow in 1984, Anna came of age in post-Soviet Russia where apart from academic drawing and painting she studied linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. For many years, Sudbina’s worked closely with the world’s leading Architects and Interior Designers. These working environments and experiences greatly informed her outlook, instilling an inclination toward all things high-quality and aesthetic, a familiarity which is visible in her use of colour, texture and compositions, particularly in her Interior of the Mind series. While studying at Central Saint Martins, Sudbina began combining her training in academic drawing and painting, which she had studied under the esteemed Moscow artist Maria Burganova, with the freedom of abstraction. The result is a body of work that documents Sudbina’s increasing confidence in her mark-making and style, moving away from the detail of her earlier figurative compositions toward abstract spaces and places. To achieve this, Sudbina has adapted new and innovative ways of painting, a process which involves pulling and pushing paint using found objects such as plastic clothes tags. The control she gains from using smaller tools over paintbrushes is a closeness between artist and painting which mimics that of process art, building layers not as a painting per se but as a two-dimensional sculpture. Once again, we are reminded of Sudbina’s interest in architecture, space and three-dimensional form. The expansiveness of Sudbina’s expressionistic canvases is contrasted with the intimacy of minute details, subtle changes in tone and intricate painterly brushwork with sharp ink lines painted quickly, directly and with conviction. Technically fluent her complex and beautiful multimedia paintings have an enigmatic quality, titillating the imagination and speaking to the subconscious. In essence, Sudbina’s point of departure is a debate between choice and chance. Her hands choose to control her chosen mediums, acrylic and ink using small found objects, a process which is juxtaposed by the chance involved in gestural mark-making, such as the independent behaviour of materials, a splash of ink or the unpredictability of mixing colour. In building a composition, Sudbina finds herself in a meditative state, guided by her subconscious thoughts, memories and experiences, each painting becoming its own spiritual journey.