I’ve been an artist all my life. I didn’t take the prescribed road of art school. Instead I studied the classics of western thought. After that, came to NM and studied with Jorge Fick. Taking away everything except a 2B pencil he set about teaching me to draw, successfully, I might add. Later he gave me an eraser.

The next big thing was meeting a mouse and feeling like this was my true medium. Leaving brushes behind I began to make movies and draw on the computer. I had the honor of working for awhile with Woody Vasulka. Now I’ve rediscovering the analog world, integrating drawing, painting and pixels and discovering the iPad as a drawing and content creation device.

I also make paper dolls, stickers, do video installations, 3D printing, constructs, drawings and massive collages.

Here is a tour of my studio and working process!
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little guy Hands — Inspired by the visual and informational content of an article about reanimating a dead pig brain, fascinated by the blue hands and geometric background and organic imagery of the brain, I constructed a formula: geometric surrounds and 3-dimensional volumes, an organic, unidentified object, human presence in the form of the hand, the blue hand, and finally, abstract, unidentifiable imagery.
little guy Mannequins — These are people from other realms. You don’t know who they are, or what worlds they inhabit. They hail from the far reaches of the collective imagination. Some of the images have been animated into slow moving loops, motionless moments from distant yet possible futures. The source material ranges from synthetic to extremely diverse captured sources, pixel mashed.
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The still images are 27” x 36” archival inkjet prints Limited edition of 10
Virus drawings by Anne Farrell Virus — Isolation without a schedule is a dream-come-true for the introverted artist except for the insecurities of the future which make it hard to motivate once in the studio. Virus series created Spring 2020. Icon virus by Leonardo Hubenthal.
little guy iPad Abstracts — These images reveal my exploration of the wide-ranging reach of the iPad. This includes photography, native-to-the-device drawing and drawing on paper, image manipulation, 3D graphics and the imaginative, unbounded combination of all these methodologies. Sometimes the work feels sculptural, almost physical as one manipulates the image elements directly with ones fingers. The inclusion of all these techniques under one roof, available at the touch of a finger, is new and it has become a fully integrated component of the creative process.
link to 3d printed objects page by Anne Farrell 3d Prints — As I conceive and design these 3D objects I contemplate them in the vacuum of an unknown future (printing), trying to find out what that future is, what the process teaches me. This is answered by doing, going back to conceptualization from the end result and then asking again “what is next?” It is unknown until it is known and when it is known, we are done with it and move on.
link to CONSTRUCTS page by Anne Farrell CONSTRUCTs — It’s about: using what is on hand in the studio, collected detritus from our consumptive culture.
It’s about: having fun, playing with boundaries, making sense, even beauty, out of common stuff.
It’s about: hands-on tangibility ~ the physicality of making things ~ CONSTRUCTION!
And, it takes evolutionary time to reveal perfect placement of the pieces.
installations link Installations — This link connects to nine video installations. In all of these, the movie itself is just one component of an complete sculptural installation. Live action performance has recently become an additional component. Older movies are archived here.
iphone drawings link iDrawings — The iPad provides a perfect merging ground for the hand drawn line and electronic media. This series moves from the initial iPhone drawings, into the more accomplished, higher resolution iPad images. They are not computer generated or manipulated. They are done directly on the device, with commonly available software and my finger. Printed archivally using pigment ink and rag paper in signed and numbered limited editions. More drawings are archived here.
link to collage collection Collages — These rousing collages are constructed with love and abandon from piles and stashes of repurposed, found and boughten materials. Highlights enter in the form of stickers, prints, cut outs, dimensional stuff, commercial packaging: anything goes. Everybody likes to think about flowers, especially during a pandemic, whether they admit it or not. Nobody wants to drown at the end of the world. And some people are perfectly happy to stay home.
puppets Puppet Dolls : ARCHIVED — These puppet dolls embody the fun stuff from childhood play that we want to have in the studio while they are, no doubt, parts of the self that need to be made manifest. They do have a character of simplicity while still manifesting the enjoyment of working with material. Perhaps one day they will star in a movie. In the meantime, they can play on their own. Sometimes they travel with me. Some of them have gotten us in trouble.
little guy Little Guy Drawings : ARCHIVED — The images in this series came to me one at a time, popping into my head completely formed and then I had to draw them. Altogether they construct a pictorial narrative of the workings of my inner processing during a time of transition. They are small and detailed, and the creation process involves both analog and electronic drawing.
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4” by 6” mixed media
link to Thomas K. Simpson's website Books : ARCHIVED — Illustration — I worked with Thomas K. Simpson for a number of years. First, doing the diagrammatic images for his book, Maxwell on the Electromagnetic Field: A Guided Study (Masterworks of Discovery) and a short, lavishly illustrated book entitled Lewis Carroll Meets the Imaginary Number, available in iBook or Kindle format.
    I have also created the illustrations for Neverland, CO, by Jean Selig, a modern fairytale for young adults of all ages and for The Crying Boy by Victoria Garrison.
movie link Littles : ARCHIVED — These images continue my exploration into other worlds, now using photographically based content. Though based in “real” content, these images become totally synthetic, allowing me to probe the diminutive and mysterious, manipulating them to reveal the amazing drama, humor and inscrutability inherent in these scenes.
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They are printed in archival, large format, limited editions, minimum size 27” x 20”.
little guy Little Guys : ARCHIVED — (click the image to the left to view) These diminutive images explore the degradation of information while building quiet worlds that move in their own slow time. There is no high drama, just a little tension between the figures and their surroundings.
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The original source material playfully pulls from diverse and unrestrained sources. It is intentionally degraded, expanded and blurred. In the end, the images are about loneliness and isolation as the inhabitants move through wide empty worlds.   4” by 6” archival inkjet prints, limited edition of 10.
little guy Small Series : ARCHIVED — This series includes some “mini” series that were done during travels, from collected items. In the Morelia, CVS and Puerto series content was collected from the streets of the city, advertising, packaging and my own photos. In the Flower Mash series, I took a photo of each of the flowers on the grounds of the beachside hotel and used them to make a tropical mix.
icon drawins link Icons : ARCHIVED — These drawings are part of a developing vocabulary of images to be used in drawings and movies. They are what Plato refers to as εἶδος forms of objects. They represent our, or really, my idea of a dog or a chair. They are imbued with the aura of thought. They are most real without being real at all.
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I let the deep reaches of the collective unconscious speak through the mark of the crayon. The drawings started as tiny pen and ink thought drawings. They were ingested into the electronic world, processed and spit out again, increased in size twenty-fold. Then the painting began. One of a kind, mixed media on archival paper. 17” x 22”

 
Content: © Anne Farrell 2008–2020