Anna Fletcher
Artist Statement
At four years old, I determined that the illustrated yellow sun with lines stretching outwards wasn’t the way the real sun looked. To figure this out, I attempted to stare at the sun and draw what I saw. After that, all my drawings of suns that I created in preschool had blue spots in the center. My teachers asked me what the dots were, so I told them, “When I look at the sun, this is what I see.” From that moment on I was thrown into art classes.
In 2010 I graduated from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo with a Bachelors of Fine Arts. In school I focused primarily on oil, watercolor, portraits, and illustration. In 2012 I began my first artistic job as an intern for a stationery designer in San Francisco. There I developed my skills for stationery and watercolor. I loved the contradiction of working with a medium that required control, yet wants to move freely. In 2016 I started working for Stripe. During my time at Stripe, my co-worker asked if I could paint gardenias for the background of a product being posted onto our Instagram. I was pleasantly surprised with how the gardenias turned out and began painting more botanical images and landscapes. What started as a small side project, turned into the colorful gallery images you see today.
Currently, I keep myself busy with creating wedding stationery and working events for my friends and my wedding planning business, Smith & Murphy Events and Design House. On top of that I am back in school at Monterey Peninsula College, working on my Associates as a Registered Dental Assistant and brainstorming ideas to write and illustrate my own children’s books. While I would never try to stare at the sun now, I am still trying to look at the world from an artistically different point of view.
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First Friday Artist Reception
September 1st
5–9
Cocktails will be served.
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