artist statement

Watercolour, drawing, etching, and, more recently, oil painting are the media that Anna works with, and she enjoys the challenges and different approaches to each. Especially with watercolour and drawing, she always works on location, either sitting outside battling the sun and the bugs, or using the car as a traveling studio, which enables her to work outside even in the winter months. She has even managed to work on a 24″ x 36″ oil painting in the car and not get too much paint on the upholstery.

“My work is mainly about observation and response. I paint what I am drawn to, obviously filtered through my studies, my admiration of certain painters, my teachers, my cultural background and my disposition. I like to paint on location as much as possible, so the work is also influenced by the heat of the sun, the changing light, the bugs, the wind… Many subtle changes occur both in what I am painting and in the way I see it over the time I sit there taking it in.”

selected biography

Anna Syperek, born in England of Polish and English parents and raised in Oshawa, Ontario, moved to Antigonish, Nova Scotia in 1971, when she was 20. Anna graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1980.

After Art College, Anna settled back in the Antigonish area on the shores of St.Georges Bay with her husband, a film-maker, and together they raised a family of three daughters. Anna teaches part time in the Art Department at St. Francis Xavier University where she also set up a community print making workshop.

Anna’s work is in the collection of the Canada Council and Nova Scotia Art Banks and numerous public and private collections across Canada, the United States, and Europe. She has received grants from the Canada Council, Nova Scotia Arts Council, and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Anna belongs to the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, the Nova Scotia Printmakers Association, Visual Arts Nova Scotia, and the Society of Antigonish Printmakers. She is a past president of the Nova Scotia Printmakers Association.

Anna has appeared in numerous solo and group shows throughout the Maritimes and the rest of Canada. In 2005, a large exhibition of her work entitled “Old New Scotland” traveled to four galleries in Scotland, courtesy of the Highland Council of Scotland.