Featured Artist: Ana Wood

This week's featured artist is Ana Wood. She has answered some of our questions about her artistic process.

When I was young I was really interested in arts and crafts. I would spend hours painting by numbers, practicing children's craft kits like weaving, pottery, knitting, sewing. I took many visual art  courses in high school and went on to OCADU for Drawing & Painting and then George Brown College for Digital Art. 

What Inspires you?

Always keenly interested in nature and culture. which emerged from my roots. I am an adopted female Guatemalan raised in Canada. My first home in Canada was surrounded by wondrous trees on mountain like landscapes 15 minutes from the beach of Nanaimo, BC. I moved to the flat farm surrounded town of Newmarket. The contrast of the land and people with my need to find a way to define who I am, culturally, has become an influence on my life. Later it became the basis for my artwork.

Tell us about your chosen medium?

I work mainly in acrylic and watercolour, but am also exploring new mediums and surfaces. For now I work mainly on watercolour paper and canvas, with a few pieces on wood panels. I am also in the midst of perfecting new mediums such as digital painting, stitch work, weaving and pencil. The reason I am practicing various ways of creating imagery is to properly express and explore the world as I know it.  

Can you tell us more about your distinctive style?

What has started to make my work more unique is my exploration into culture, language and nature which has been the stepping stone into my own creation of my own realm. I have over the years tried to develop my own visual language to go with my own narratives of the world based on other mythologies and perspectives of various backgrounds with the incorporation of my surroundings and views. This is a slow process, and I am still at the beginning, as I am planning to make this a life long process to fully explore myself as well as the world. 

Thank you Ana, for sharing so much of yourself and your work. Ana will be participating in this year's studio tour during the weekend of October 15th and 16th.