RedNude Print

Anna Friesens work focuses primarily on collages, drawings and watercolors. The collages feature reduced compositions that capture specific atmospheres or anecdotes, created using found materials to produce precise and expressive images. Her watercolors, often depicting nudes, abstract the human form, exploring the interplay between form and color, and capturing the beauty of subtle details. "I love the versatility of working with collage and watercolors, and I embrace the various surprises they offer during the process. The searching, finding, and combining of collages appeals to my sense of discovery. I enjoy playing with the image fragments until they tell a story. The seemingly endless source of images I find in discarded books, mostly old animal photography volumes or self-help-books, fascinates and inspires me. The water that allows the colors to flow into one another, the surprises I respond to, have always been a fascination for me when working with watercolors. Even when I depict a subject, usually nudes or florals, at a certain point, the colors and forms take center stage, and I add lines, shapes, and colors. I tell a new story, inspired by what I've seen. This is something that unites my works, despite their thematic and media diversity: the interplay between the real and the imagined, between naturalism and abstraction. The curiosity for what has already been found and the freedom of adding what is imagined." Anna Friesen (1989) studied Art Education at the University of Siegen. She received the NRW stipend in 2010 for her artistic work. Living and working in Cologne, Germany.