Interview with artist Anna Curzon Price
Back in 2023, Anna Curzon Price and I were both studying at the Essential School of Painting on the brand new Advanced Painting course. Anna was in her second and final year, and I was in my first. We were sharing a studio and worked side by side. In preparation for her year's grad show, the students put together a big publication, celebrating the course's first two years. As part of the catalogue, graduating artists were interviewed by their fellow students, and I volunteered to interview Anna and learn more about her fascinating practice. The interview was recorded and transcribed, and Anna edited her answers for clarity before they were published. Below is the edited interview:
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| 'Bum Lady' Acrylic, stitching, found canvas, shirt (unbuttoned and opened), stretchy nude nylon fabric, nails 150x200cm 2023 (Private Collection) |
Louis: How important are the senses to you?
Anna: Very! This year, I've started making tactile, stitched-together
paintings out of offcuts and scraps of clothing. I've been thinking a lot about
desire and frustrated desire in particular, and for me, touch, not just sight,
has to come into this. At the same time as thinking about desire as subject
matter for my painting, I've also been thinking about how people fetishise
paintings, yet touching them is prohibited.
I like the idea of playing with people's instinct to touch
surfaces which they do not quite understand. Sometimes I find signs that
someone has touched one of my paintings, and I really like this. It shows that
I have succeeded in tempting and intriguing them and forced them to be naughty!
Is memory a significant part of your explorations?
Yes and no. I never try to directly recreate a memory in a painting. But my personal experiences tend to be starting points. I keep a journal and make lots of quick biro doodles of everyday interactions and observations. Looking back at these sketches helps me to remember how I was feeling at a particular moment. These then act as a starting point for a work. For example, 'Plucked Up Swan' was based on a quick drawing I made of being jammed inside a Portaloo with three friends on a night out. That moment was the starting point for the work, but while painting, new things always come in. The final image is completely different from the initial memory. I started thinking about feelings of desire, disgust and intimacy. The woman on the toilet turned into a monster, squashing a swan. Wanting to cling to memories and relive them through material things is important to me, too. That's why I use scraps of fabric and collect things which remind me of a specific place or person. But once again, using these fragments from personal history within a painting gives me the freedom to invent and transform memories. I'm not bothered by the fact that every time you remember something, you're making a new story about it. It gives you the freedom to build up stories which are true to you but also feel mythical and meaningful on a wider scale.
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| 'Plucked Up Swan' Oil, shirt sleeves, velvet, nylon and stitching on canvas 204x86cm 2023 |
Which artists do you think have influenced your work the most?
I've been thinking about Paula Rego a lot recently. I am
really interested in the way that she uses her personal experiences and family members
as a starting point for her work. Even though her paintings include specific references
to her own past - for example, she might pose her son in a suit her husband used
to wear - the works speak directly to general human experiences. I'm interested
in how she does this by combining her memories with generally recognisable tropes
like fairy tales.
I love art which manages to use humble, everyday materials and
imbue them with a magical pull, so I look at a lot of installation artists too.
I've loved Mie Olise Kajergaard's work since school. She
makes really big structures, with weird frames and drapings and hangings. She combines
the physical structures of her paintings with her own fairytale imagery of
alternative societies. She uses lots of heavy, drippy house paint and big brush
marks, which I also think is cool. Louise Bourgeois' use of textiles and metal
to make sculptures which are both soft and violent has also been a big
influence.
Seeing as there are lots of things coming off your canvases, they also start to become installations. I was wondering, where's the limit? How far out from the wall do you think you're willing to go at the moment?
Part of why I am attracted to painting is that it sets some limits
on what you have to focus on; it forces you to limit your ideas to one, flat,
2D surface. Indeed, I often look at a painting when I finish and think, “Wow, I
wish this existed on a stand or was double-sided or had massive legs coming off
the side”. One day, I hope that they will be. Especially after seeing the Magdalena
Abakanowicz exhibition at the Tate. I was blown away by the weightiness and
bodiliness of her hanging, free-standing tapestry forms. I also think there is
something really magical about the simplicity of the illusion of painting, how
light and floppy a painting on an unstretched piece of canvas is. Like, the other
day when I took ‘Plucked Up Swan’ off my studio wall after months of working
on her, it was funny to feel how weightless she was. I think there is something
sweet about the tradition of painting, investing so much seriousness and effort
into an image which is so clearly a weightless artifice.
What does a hole in the canvas mean to you?
Because my work is so much about the body and the
materiality of the body, I really want to resist the idea that a painting needs
to be done on a perfectly stretched, pristine, white canvas. The surfaces on which
I make my paintings have folds, bumps, hairs, specks and also, of course,
holes. I think it's really important to embrace the fact that paintings are
material objects and they are things, and that this fact does not make them any
less magical or sacred. I think one of the big problems our society has is that
we have stripped away feelings of wonder for the material world. We feel like we
need to look beyond the everyday in order to find magic, to projected images on
screens or go to Outer Space. Holes are tricky because they immediately reveal
the painting to be just a thing, like a holey old pair of pants. But if you can
put a hole in your canvas without it destroying the magic of your painting and
the illusionistic space you are trying to create, then you are doing a really
good job. You are marrying the magic of conjuring images with the fact that the
painting is a real, 3D thing in the world.
How do you choose your colours? And do you choose them? Maybe they just come out in the process...
My approach to colour has really changed in the last two
years. I used to always go with reds and blues because of what they symbolise
to me. Red and blue refer to biology diagrams of veins and arteries. They also
make me think of the pinky-blue writing paper I used to write on in school. It
had blue lines and pink margins, and I still buy it even though it's a little
bit more expensive, just because the colours are so nice. I like messing around
with ideas of colours symbolising gender. I did a pink and blue painting of me
and my friend eating penis pasta. Should I paint that penis pink or blue, or is
that a blue boob on a pink body or vice versa? But now, I've moved away from
this approach, and I am really trying to find a subtler palette for myself. I
love Morandi's colours and I have been struggling to try and mix his subtle
greys and browns. I've only recently learned simple things like how different
colours can have the same tone. My colours come from the imagination. I'm not
looking to match them to real life. I want them to be expressive. I want them
to mostly be dull and fleshy, but to use a few bright shockers to draw
attention to certain areas of the painting.
Is humour something you're interested in including?
I think humour is great. It's a great way to get people
to look at what you're doing and see things differently. I've been
working on this series using Primark pants. I really enjoyed being like "Yeah,
I'm a painter ... that uses Primark pants". But really, the pants are
meant to be a hook which draws people into works which deal with more serious issues.
I've combined the pants with imagery that I relate to the degradation of the natural
landscape, for example, archive images of big mines or infrastructure projects
from an old book called 'The Great Engineering Wonders of the World'. I've also
included gold leaf on most of them. I like how funny the idea of gold-leafing
Primark pants is. But also, the gold leaf on pants refers to how our desires as
consumers shape the world we inhabit as well as our bodies - like how they've
found rocket fuel in mother's breast milk. At the same time as enjoying humour,
I get frustrated with work that is completely taking the piss. I don't want to
do that. At the moment, I'm a bit worried that maybe I'm going to stray into
some cheesy territory soon because I want to do "nice things". I want
to express real feelings and not just be sort of distanced and ironic about it.
If there was one thing you wanted viewers to walk away with, when they've seen your work, what would it be? If they only had one impression ...
Unsettled and frustrated, wanting to know more and to
understand the image better, probably. . . That does not sound like a very nice
thing to want to create in someone, but I guess I am exploring darker feelings and
things which are a bit taboo at the moment...
Do you aim to depict a specific narrative, or is it more a representation of non-verbal feelings or experiences?
I'm not trying to depict a specific narrative. I really love
ambiguous images, where you can't tell if something violent is happening here
or if it's something caring. I like asking questions and wondering what more is
there to this picture? Is there something more difficult going on? Is there
some sort of power struggle? What is the relationship between the people there and
the animals or whatever it is? Lynette Yiadom-Boakye talks about the importance
of her work being open-ended; this is part of what makes the images universally
meaningful. I am more interested in finding images for these feelings we have
in common, that we recognise but can't or don't express.
I want to create things which are mysterious and magical,
but also, somehow, recognisable in oneself. I went to the Vermeer show, and
there was so much mystery in his images. You want to know "what is the girl
reading in the window?" or “What music is she actually playing?” or “Who
is she talking to?" but you can't. I like how his paintings invite you to make
up your own story, just from the simple things like the light, pose and the objects
in the painting·
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| Vanishing Point Pants, gold leaf, wall filler, tape, acrylic paint 63x44cm 2022 |
And finally, do you think art can be effective as a political tool?
100% Yes! One hundred per cent yes.
Just the act of making art is political, regardless of whether
the final piece is or not. I'm not sure if any of the works of art I have made are
directly political, but the fact that I have organised my life in order to be
able to spend as much time as possible with art is definitely political.
This is part of why I love teaching art. You help your
students see that their actions can have a real, tangible impact on the things
around them. Making art makes it feel like something that begins as only the inkling
of a possibility in your head can become a real, material thing. Giving people
the sense of satisfaction and agency which comes from making seems to me to be
crucial to creating the active civil society which a democracy needs.
Of course, artworks also contribute a huge amount to
changing perceptions of what is acceptable, what is worthy of attention and
what is not. When we remember history, we remember great works of art – like Guernica.
I don’t think any of my own artworks are political in the way I would want them
to be. Issues we face in the 21st century (the climate crisis, injustice,
the legacy of colonialism, etc.) feel impossibly massive. I'd find it really
paralysing to come into the studio with the explicit goal to make work about
them. But inevitably, artworks reflect the concerns of their age, and I am
comforted by that at least.
I liked how the artist Alastair Mackinven described himself
as radically unemployed in a world obsessed with production and function. All I
am at the moment is radically unemployed; I try to open up possibilities for
myself and others to live otherwise within a much larger system I disagree
with.
After graduating from the Essential School of Painting in 2023, Anna went on to study at the Slade and recently graduated with an MA in Painting. She has won the Ivan Juritz Prize for Image (2025), the Cass Art Painting Prize (2025) and the Richard Ford Award (2024). Group shows include Teaspoon Projects (2025), Terrace Gallery (2025), Saatchi Gallery (upcoming), Queercircle (2023) and Kettle’s Yard (2020).
instagram.com/annacurzonprice/