A n n a I l s l e y

I have a new painting showing at Strings Attached | Chapter II @pipelinecontemporary co curated by @alittleabout.art it’s on until 10th Jan alongside some great artists 🤍go see and please get in touch if you’d like more info Little Deaths oil on canvas 130 x 100 cm 2025 📸 @jackelliotedwards #painting

Heres a new one: Three Graces Oil on canvas on panel 2025 40 x 30 cm Cos charm grace and beauty are never far from my painting brain #grace #charm #beauty

Anna Ilsley @annailsley shares how motherhood influences her work.⁠ ⁠ "I wasn't expecting our mother-daughter language to enrich my painterly world so much. With children, a world of very visual personification occurs: the full belly of a rain cloud; the sock that refuses to be put on; the monster that hides shoes; the hungry, empty puzzle box; the toothbrush that collects lost animals. I love the blend of the magical and the banal/everyday. It taps into an ancient neurological pathway, maybe? This constant anthropomorphism comes so naturally to children, and adults who spend a lot of time with children lean on it too…⁠ ⁠ On a practical note, it is worth saying that I personally did not enter the studio for Gwen's first 6 months. Instead I painted monsters on the bathroom wall, and after that I painted as she napped in the buggy, hours which blissfully lengthened and then stopped. Now at age 5 she mostly comes during the school holidays where the studio is quite rightly a lawless zone: the vilest toys come here, the movies go on and paints are always on tap."⁠ ⁠ Artworks by @annailsley featured: ⁠ 1. The Quickening, 2023, oil on canvas, 180 x 130 cm⁠ 2. Most Wanted, 2022, ink on paper, 25 x 32.5 cm⁠ 3. Dolce Far Niente, 2024, oil on cradled board, 30 x 22 cm⁠ ⁠ ___⁠ ⁠ Anna Ilsley’s work is inspired by mythologies and cultural references from across eras and cultures, her paintings and drawings address the physical and emotional impact of motherhood and her intensely strong urge to kick back against the cultural and political forces that shape women’s relationships with their own bodies. ⁠ ⁠ #MothersDay #motherhood #drawing

Thrilled to be showing some new paintings alongside incredibly talented artists, curated by brilliant @marcelle.joseph at Paul Smith @paulsmithsfoundation The opening is on Thursday 4th June, 6-8pm at Paul Smith, can’t wait, hope to see you there! 💖 ‘Wabi Sabi: Untangling the Meaning of Beauty’ showcases the work of nine female-identifying artists who seek beauty in balance and harmony as well as the imperfection of life: Anna Ilsley C Lucy R Whitehead Chechú Álava Gal Schindler Grace Mattingly Harriet Gillett Lindsey Mendick Sophie von Hellermann Susie Green Utilising a spare organic line, a pale palette, or a judicious use of negative space, these artists construct harbours of solace in their works in direct contrast to our increasingly chaotic time on planet Earth. This economy of line, form and composition in the works represents an understated aesthetics that could be interpreted as ‘wabi-sabi’. In many ways, the modest form of expression employed by each artist draws similarities to ikebana - the single flower in a vase that everyone bows to before taking their place at the tea ceremony table. And like the tea ceremony, these artworks emphasise direct experience over verbal explanation, just as wabi-sabi is best understood in a non-verbal experiential way. Painting and sculpting are activities, ones just like the ancient Japanese arts of the tea ceremony, and the cultivation of bonsai. Like the tranquil simplicity found in these activities, the beauty sought by these nine artists is a state of mind, reminding us to slow down and take comfort in the natural beauty around us, however imperfect or impermanent it may be. @annailsley @c.lucy.r.whitehead @chechualava @galsschindler @grace__mattingly @harrietgillettart @lindseymendick @sophievonhellermann @susiegreen_ Paul Smith Space 9 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BL Exhibition Dates: 5th June 2026 – 14th September 2026 Opening: 4th June 2026, 6 - 8 pm Massive thank you to @marcelle.joseph 💜 Image: @sophievonhellermann

Today is the last day of The Mother Lode A massive thank you to Tor Cooke and the amazing team @the_artstation Open 10-4 had a lot of fun making these wall drawings 🧡 get in touch if you’d like to see a PDF of works in the exhibition ❤️ #walldrawing

Platform 2025 oil on cradled board 42 x 30 cm @the_artstation The Mother Lode until 9th May DM for a pdf of works 👢👢 #platform

It’s the last week to view The Mother Lode @the_artstation curated by Tor Cooke open Mon-Fri 10-4 or by appointment until May 9th I loved making these wall paintings, taken directly from ‘birth figures’, an incredible collection of illustrations included in guides to women’s healthcare and midwifery, published into 18th c.. Whats fascinating to me is the way the foetus/s has been historically imagined in the womb, and the perceived relationship, (both very much shifting), with the pregnant mother. And the v.revealing insights to how women’s bodies, female thoughts and imagination are historically so incredibly feared and revered. As a side note The cultural reference that I couldn’t get out of my head when I was pregnant was the alien visible in Elizabeths belly in the movie Prometheus … literally out of this world Marginalia-ey and painted at toddler height, you can see in the last pic alongside Three Graces 2025 Oil on canvas on board 40 x 30 cm Dm for the catalogue of available works and more info! I might do a wall drawing edition. Is that a thing? If you’re interested in that send me a message I’d love to hear from you! 📸 Doug Atfield # birthfigures

Thank you @hettiejudah for coming to @the_artstation and for leading the talk with such professionalism and lightheartedness. I am excited to read your book! Thank you Tor for this opportunity and my fabulous new friends @guthouses and @annailsley for fun, enriching and enjoyable experience. Anna Ilsley exhibition is still open till 9th May. #themotherlode

Pinch Point 2025 oil on canvas on cradled board 42 x 30 cm On show at @the_artstation in The Mother Lode Open weekdays 10-4 and Saturdays by appointment until 09.05 DM for details 🧡 #pinchpoint #contemporarypainting #theartstation #themotherlode

I’m very pleased to be showing some new work and wall drawings alongside this painting Big Mother, 2022, oil on canvas, 200 x 150 cm in my very own neighbourhood @the_artstation as part 3 of The Mother Lode, devised and curated by wonderful Tor Cooke. It’s a small but special bringing together of work made throughout the last 6 yrs of motherhood and I’d love to see you there- PV this Saturday 18 April 6-8pm Totally thrilled that on 25th April 4:30-5:30 @hettiejudah , writer and curator, will be coming to @the_artstation to lead a panel talk with The Mother Lode artists, @guthouses @kristina.tonev and myself. This will be followed by a book signing for Hettie’s new book How to Enter the Art World. Book your free ticket! The book even mentions Hettie’s previous talk @asylumstudiosuk during Storm Durragh… pretty excited to get my copy! Links in bio #themotherlode @the_artstation #howtoentertheartworld

Sharing a few studio pics, inspo and works in progress before we take off for Cornwall in a few days. Over the last 5 or 6 years I’ve painted quite a few enormous and almost inflated skirts (unlike Cheryl’s on the last slide which I adore)..fuelled by this historic insistence to cover and conceal, holding a woman up out and in, the ever evolving etiquette for both amplifying and restricting body parts. and the underlying garments - another layer of fascination!- ‘17th-century sources specifically refer to “iron bodies” as garments that helped adult women (and sometimes men) to make their torsos more beautiful. Many of these writings are also moralising in tone. A sermon from 1632 states that “when men and womens bodies be crooked and deformed, they weare iron bodies, and will endure any thing to make them straight again...”’-Revealing the iron corset- Elizabeth McFadden -Wellcome Collection p.8 Art Monsters by Lauren Elkin In the speech version of “Professions for Women’ - the rawer, more urgent version of these ideas - Woolf explicitly personifies the imagination, giving it, in effect, its own body, with which it darts and rushes, off to the depths, ‘heaven knows where’. And then she has to be pulled back, ‘panting with rage and disappoint-ment. “My dear you were going altogether too far,’” the fisherwoman tells her. ‘* She tries to mollify the offended imagination; it shall not ever be thus, she promises. One day men will be less ‘shocked’ when a woman ‘speaks the truth about her body’ ‘We have only got to wait fifty years or so. In fifty years I shall be able to use all this very queer knowledge that you are ready to bring me. But not now. ‘Very well says the imagination, dressing herself up again in her petticoats and skirts, we will wait. We will wait another 50 years. But it seems to me a pity’

Here’s a detail of one I’ve been working on this winter whilst wearing 3 hot water bottles, multiple roll necks (cue tasty neck rash 🙏) and no lasting answer to numb toes… but painting brain living in Mexico with @kt_franklin Female friendship, sisterhood etc riding high, it has trickled in since discussing the notion of Idle Gossip (medieval warning of in pic 2) with @davidauborn @tothestudio - I often find it takes a year or so for themes I’m researching to surface in painting. Excited to share some more new works soon 🩵 #painting