Anna Sudbina
At first glance, there was a small painting, with a powerful abstract narrative, that caught my attention by artist Anna Sudbina. I don’t know if it is the abstract expressionism and the hints of cubism or the collective pallet of interior colour tones, or the theatrical portrayal of people in her interior landscapes. These reflections are combined with a stylised element of modern society, in an interior world, as well as abstract landscapes and cubist cityscapes. The language of good taste resonates as a subtext, which all becomes clearer during my interview with Anna. There are two elements to Anna’s work, her figurative and portraits, they both relay this elegant portrayal of people, with the fluidity reminiscent of the London movement with her no rules, and are mostly women resonating the allure of strength, combined with bold violent strokes in strong and confident compositions. There is a hint of glamour and stance incorporated within the colours, textures and structures, you can see the nuances of silks and expensive fabrics, however with the added intense brushstrokes, so that the faces are distorted, this escapes the idea of a portrait in the conventual sense, more a feeling of who the person is as a character. Within these settings, Anna has bought a modern technique of modern expressionism that represents a beautiful understanding of this century with a timeless quality.
Anna was born in Russia, and always wanted to be an artist she tells me, committed to drawing and painting, yet similar narratives run through some artist’s stories. She felt society frowned upon artists as not having a proper job. So she chose to be a designer. She did ask her parents though, if she could have art classes when she was a teenager, and they organised tutorials with a prominent artist and teacher in Moscow. Anna describes a family as a dynasty of bohemian nobility, they lived in the old Russian houses. She reminisces it as the best memory of her art education, describing the bohemian atmosphere in the house with students of all levels and ages in their art apprenticeship, and how she learnt the skills of life drawing, perspectives and all the skills of European expressionism and cubism.
A turning point in her life was taking part in a debate competition in English, winning a grant to attend university in Russia, “It was sort of an Olympics in English” she explains to me. An intense English program, the prize was studying, linguistics, psychology, philosophy and international communications. She thought she would do it for just a year, instead, she enjoyed it so much, that she attended for four years. She additionally joined the creative output and did a course in interior design. After achieving a Bachelor, she decided to change route, so she went back to her first love art. Anna applied at Central St Martins in London for a Master’s, however, was offered a foundation. This did not put her off, and she came to London to start her course, she loved it, she tells me, it was the complete opposite of her Russian art education. She recalls her St Martin’s tutors pointing to her in the direction where the library was, and the rest was up to her, to develop her individual thinking. The course was very multi-disciplinary Anna explains.
Anna and I talked about education for a while and all the benefits of traditional techniques in contrast to the freedoms in London. She references the life-changing artists she most admires, the avant-garde Russian artists Chagall and Kandinsky. She emphasises how she felt the advantages of the academic part of her training as an artist, long before “You start your own style and creativity” she tells me. Describing St Martins as super conceptual in contrast to a lot of feeding of information in Moscow compared to the freedom in England. She always liked the fact that they wanted us to think. After graduating, Anna tells me she still wasn’t ready to be an artist, emphasising her lack of confidence. Anna was still conditioned with the notion that being an artist was not a proper job. “This is what I was putting into my own head, that for women it is trickier, that there is stronger imposter syndrome,” she explains. “It was a really harsh facing of reality” she tells me.
A job found her through a recruitment agency, as project management and sales at the exclusive interior design supplier, Ebony and Co. Anna describes the offices in Saville Row. “It was all so pretty, the roads smelt of perfume” she exclaims. For 10 years, she enjoyed a comfortable salary, living the life as a single woman near Portobello Road. But there was this nagging feeling, she explains, so Anna started painting at home, she just needed canvas, paint and one square meter of floor space. Playing with abstraction, this was the beginning of finding herself and her language. After a few years, she started putting her work out there. It was a life-changing decision after the birth of her son five years ago. He is the reason she jumped off the cliff and quit her job, when she became pregnant, she felt she had no chance in the world to do all three, be a mother, have a full-time job and be an artist, and she decided not to return after maternity leave, to take her art practice more seriously and turn it into a business.
Anna describes being exposed to the crème de la crème of interior designers, she travelled extensively to places like Paris and Italy, and experiences with everything exquisite, she explains. This is her inspiration, some of the work is broken into pieces using a technique with ink, then people started creeping into her paintings. She finds art fairs are a confidence building exercise, and it does make a change in her life to see the excitement in the faces of a collector. “I love it when people connect with my work and really see it, sometimes they explain it better than I can” A moment that resonated with Anna recently was when a woman spoke to her about her portraits describing them as ‘paintings of strong women in a broken world’.
Interview: Antoinette Haselhorst
