INTERVIEW WITH WALKER FINE ART, DENVER

May 2024

 

 

Here is a recent interview I had with Walker Fine Art - Denver art gallery I have been working with for close to a decade. 

 

 GET TO KNOW...Ana Žanić

Give me the basics.

 
I grew up in Croatia where I spent more than half of my life. I attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Croatia’s capital, Zagreb, where I received my Master of Fine Arts degree. I moved to the United States with my husband in 2003, when he enrolled in physics graduate program at the University of Texas at Austin. After about five years in Austin, we moved to the Chicago area, close to Fermi National Laboratory, and now reside in Geneva, Illinois, with our two sons.

Tell me about your art journey.

  

I was drawing, painting and making things with clay, since my earliest childhood. Something very specific to my family is that we have over a dozen professional visual artists, so art was a way of life, so to speak.
In addition to my creative pursuits, I was very drawn to biology, specifically botany and marine biology and I attended a biology-focused high school. However, when the time came to make a decision about college, I knew with certainty I wanted to pursue art. Croatia is a small country and art school is quite competitive. I remember how excited I was when I got accepted to The Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

The first year of school my program started traditionally, with portraits, and still lives. When we got assigned our first homework, I did some of it in watercolor; I remember my professor saying “these are really strong, I think watercolor is your medium!”. While I always felt very much at ease with watercolor, in school I experimented with various mediums. By the end of my program I was doing huge abstract oil canvases, rich in color and texture, very lively and expressive.

Upon arriving to the United States, several months after I graduated, I found myself with lot of time to focus on my practice. In Austin (at University of Texas) I audited several art history classes that interested me, and took a couple of ceramics workshops with master potters, through Austin Museum of Art. I was building my portfolio, and regularly participated in group exhibitions. I didn't have a studio at first, so working with oil paints was no longer optimal, and I found myself once again gravitating towards watercolor. While preparing my portfolio I was also visiting exhibitions, attending openings and was checking galleries' websites to find out where my art would fit aesthetically and conceptually. My first gallery representation started with Kathryn Markel in New York, eleven years ago. I believe this first gallery representation (with a well-established gallery such as Kathryn Markel Fine Arts) helped subsequently open other doors as well. I am still represented by Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, and have since broadened my representations, working also with Gallery 1871 in Chicago, Olson-Larsen Galleries in Des Moines and Walker Fine Art in Denver.

What inspires you?

 
I was always most interested in the abstraction and exploring the world within me. Over time I developed my personal iconography of shapes and marks. Though never a literal reference, nature is to me always an enormous source of inspiration.

 I adore the sea life, and as a child had quite a scientific interest in it. I would spend many hours investigating biology books, and making notes of the sea shells, fish, anemones, jelly fish, or algae I saw while swimming and diving in Croatia's Adriatic. I have a biology-driven nature. In my work it is reflected in the organic fluid shapes and nature's palette.

What are you most proud of in your art career? 

 
Looking back, I am really proud that I accomplished being free to do the work that I love, while starting without any connections. If I had stayed in Croatia, I would naturally be connected with the art scene by default; I went to school there, and know many artists and art historians/critics there personally. However, when I came to the United States I didn’t know anyone. I was able to hold strong in my confidence as an artist, stayed focused, worked hard, put myself out there and made it happen on my own.

What are you looking forward to next?

I am extremely excited about four exhibitions that are coming up this spring and summer. First is a group exhibition "Portals" at Walker Fine Art, in Denver, followed by a two-person exhibition at Gallery 1871 in Chicago, where I will be showing with Jane Gutheridge, whose work I first saw soon after we moved to Austin - twenty one years ago!

In July I am participating in a summer group exhibition at Olson-Larson Galleries, and in September I am showing my work in a curated water-themed group exhibition at Aurora University.

Sharing and showing my work with the audience is incredibly important to me. I am an introvert, and don’t socialize much. I am working in my studio most of the time, and am at ease that way. Still, I find that the final step to an art process needs to be its sharing, its visibility.  

 

In addition to these exhibitions, I am just really happy to spend a lot of time with my family this summer,.