About the Artist

My name is Joanne Lawson but everybody calls me Anna (hence Ananna Image). I have been involved in art as long as I can remember. My father is a sculptor (Fenwick Lawson) and the house was full of the smell of wood and the occasional door was missing (for a while) if he needed it for a piece of sculpture! My mother was a teacher but is also a brilliant writer and a Durham Quilter. All aspects of the arts was encouraged and nurtured. My brothers and I, as children, were even given a wall on which to draw and paint. Whilst I never left art completely behind, I became a mother to three children (all grown up now but still returning with even more offspring!). For most of their upbringing, I supported my children on my own. Growing up in the North East of England, I have a deep passion for issues that affect the community and have always chosen jobs that were people centred – welfare law, women’s rights, lecturing and of course the obligatory bar work and cleaning. Living in Taunton, Somerset , at the time, I returned to art in 1993 and graduated from the University of the West of England in 1998 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. Once the children had found their own paths in life I decided to live in Holland. After a couple of years, I returned to Durham where I spent my childhood and I now live in a small ex-mining village, which compounded my belief in the spirit of community. I was lecturing in Art and Design but developed ME and had to give up my career. Boredom and frustration set in and I started to paint and draw again.

I am sure my images will resonate with the vast majority of women who are all too familiar with the sometimes bewildering calls upon their femininity to problem solve both on a practical and emotional level. All are based on actual experiences, either with the children or partners. Some are combined with words to give humour and irony – some don’t need any words at all and can be interpreted according to your own experiences. Some of the figures have been drawn without clothing to accentuate the essence of the messages contained within them such as frustration, vulnerability (Sirius)Sirius etc as well as sometimes portraying the Divine Feminine (Kali)Kali. The clothing would only ‘dress up’ the figure and distract from the intended communication. They illustrate my belief that the worldly trappings of the individual are not as important as the individual themselves. The unclothed figures are stylised to ensure there is no intention of offence.

I started to draw the early images as a way of attempting to express myself during a period of extreme exhaustion. I was a mother, a worker, a student, a business partner and any other role that came to my door. I was tired and felt nobody was listening to me. I used the images as a vehicle through which I could express my feelings. I painted layers and layers of ink on a page and then surrounded it with a box to give myself a safe place in which to express emotional issues. I called them ‘Spillikins’ (Fallen Spillikins)
Fallen Spillikins after the game sometimes called ‘Pick-up-Sticks’. I felt that I had held everything together for so long and my grip had gone and everything was falling around me – there was no one else who was willing to hold on tight. After painting "Why won't you empty the bin?"
Why won't you empty the bin?, I hung it up above the bin – I was surprised to find that I didn’t need to ask anymore – it had become visual and seemed to strike home whereas when I kept asking it was viewed as nagging.

Some are very specific and deal with life’s little ironies, the day-to-day incidents encountered in my family life as well as a contemporary take on the human condition (Pretty Mam)Pretty Mam. I started these in 1995 and initially felt they were too personal to be looked at by anyone else – but as I began sharing them, my women friends found that they related to their own lives as well. Now, some twelve years later, and after much persuasion, some are now ready to be shared. There are hundreds more and I am in the process of editing them before adding them to the website.

How and why and where did these images come from? They just arrived and I had to do them. The subject matter was always to do with conversations and situations that arose out of my daily life. The images sometimes came quite quickly and sometimes, in the words of Harold Pinter, they

“germinated and bred itself {themselves}”.

He further explains:

“It proceeded according to it’s own logic. What did I do? I followed the indications, I kept a sharp eye on the clues I found myself dropping”.

On revisiting the Spillikins more recently, I was surprised to find that some closely referenced mythology, legend and the classics (Mrs Asclepius)Mrs Asclepius. Over the intervening years my interest in this area had grown through lecturing in art history and I recognised that I was using goddesses, to illustrate issues. I am still finding analogous depictions – some of which I have no prior knowledge (Snail Shelly)Snail Shelly. I am not sure how this has happened. All I know is that I used a stylised figure to portray weighty emotions in an ironic or humorous manner to make the subject matter lighter. I can only surmise that in dealing with the human condition, one goes beyond the prevailing culture and taps into something deeper and that many of the issues that we have now may have always been. I don’t know.

Occasionally I did reference mythology with a consciousness (Artemis of Ephesus)
Artemis of Ephesus however I do so much more now.

The other more obvious subject of the Spillikins is the Mother and Child, which is a powerful theme in the history of art. Traditionally the theme deals with love and nourishment on one end of the scale, and on the other, death with Isis and Osiris and the pieta'sPieta. My images rarely show the child with the mother, rather they show the consequences of the issues of motherhood and womanhood (Toothpaste)
Toothpaste. There are so many other emotions within that continuum that are not dealt with in a pictorial sense – frustration, anger, fear, exhaustion, pressure, isolation – the list goes on. They don’t necessarily make beautiful pictures but it doesn’t mean that those feelings don’t exist. They don’t take away from the love for our children – these emotions are a ‘moment’ thing. In our modern world we often don’t want to talk about the circumstances and reactions to a given situation because we may feel we are voicing our weaknesses and vulnerability both to ourselves and to others (Pull Too Hard)
Pull Too Hard. We don’t want to think that we, or our family, sometimes react badly, and we certainly don’t want anyone else to know for fear of judgement.

Motherhood is an inspiration and an eye-opener into ourselves. The learning experience should not be minimised to the polarity of feelings - it should be acknowledged and affirmed by talking and sharing – humour makes it more acceptable and promotes the shared perception “I felt like that” (Skittles)
Skittles.

The Logo

The logoAnanna Image | Logo of Ananna Image carries a strong message. The hand is so very important. It has a duality of meaning. Firstly it is the offering within the gift economy – “when the circulation of gifts create community”, (Lewis Hyde, 1983). If you haven’t read ‘The Gift’ by Lewis Hyde, it is a must! When the hand is up (in the position it is in), it matters not what age one is - the wrinkles fade away (the reality is gravity, but I don’t like to dwell on that!). When women hold their hand up like that, no matter what the age, we all have beautiful hands. It is an important part of the beauty of the offering. Buying a card for someone else is the physical manifestation of the givers thought about a friend or loved one. The hand picks (physical) for the mind (cerebral) to contemplate -for the hand to offer and for the other hand to receive. Even on a website the hand has to physically select with the mouse.

The duality is that the hand also becomes the stalk, which is the metaphor for women providing for their families in whatever ways are needed at the time (and that is always loads!!!!). The stalk is the means by which nutrients are fed to the flower and to resulting seeds thereby ensuring the continuity of the species. The stalk needs to be strong enough to support the flower head and to bend with the elements - rain, wind, whatever. It cannot let it’s head fall down or it will rot on the ground; the stalk will always try to revive itself no matter what the circumstance.

This is a huge metaphor for women. They not only support their families but they underpin them, often to their own detriment. The principles they establish in their children will benefit not only their children but also the next generation, and the next ad infinitum thereby engendering the continuation of the species. The nourishment they provide both emotionally, rationally and physically will do the same.The hand is growing out of the lines of the surrounding box. The box provides a safe place to express feelings that were, and still are, very hard for women to voice. We are still in the position of being mother provider, whether that is to parents, siblings, children, colleagues etc. We often feel that our opinions don't count and whatever affirmations we might employ to justify our feelings, we generally conform to the stereotypes of what is expected of us rather than what we need ourselves - that safe place.

The flower could be any flower - a cornflower or pumpkin flower etc. I chose the daisy because it is fresh and it was the only one out in the garden at the time that I could photograph! The daisy itself is not really important – it is the symbolism of the flower as fruition that is important. Of course the daisy is a pleasing bright image – it is a welcome sign of spring and new life - but so is a daffodil. Aesthetics do matter but they must support the intended communication – they must be onomatopoeic.

We can enjoy an image without meaning; we can enjoy an image without knowing what it means but when one puts two and two together and reaches five or six, it becomes more than the sum of it's parts.