Ann Craven

Ann Craven has been making paintings of birds since the late 1990s, inspired by colour-plates found in her Italian grandmother’s vintage ornithology books. Like the moon, the birds serve as a touchstone for memory, each repetition of the image a revisiting of a moment, a recalling of loved ones. Paintings of other animals, flowers, portraits of family and friends soon followed, in the same diaristic deployment.

For Craven, her bird paintings have totemic power: each is unique but each is also a stand-in for the people and scenarios she might have painted, were she a portrait painter. They embody memories, and offer a chance for the artist to covet her artistic history while encoding it with her current inner-life.