Today we’d like to introduce you to Anna Millholland.
Anna, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I’ve always been a late bloomer, but in the last couple of years, all these threads of my life have started coming together in a very organic way. The one constant is that I’ve consistently been making art since I was a teenager, even when I didn’t necessarily feel like it or know why. I’ve made a lot of bad art, but I kept growing and learning, and then when opportunities to show started coming up, I had the stuff to put out into the world. I make a range of stuff, and I always have affordable art available in some capacity. Making art that’s accessible to anyone (zines, prints, very simple drawings, etc.) is something I feel strongly about. I want everyone to feel like collecting art is possible, that it’s something they can and should do, and don’t need a lot of money to participate in
I graduated with a BFA from Parsons in the middle of the recession and no idea what I was supposed to do next. I remember thinking, like, “ok… all that work and I guess I’m just a hobby artist now.” Before I’d been studying art, which sounds very respectable, and I’d done all these incredible internships, and then all of a sudden I was just someone with a lot of art supplies and no structure to my days or vision for my life. I moved home for a bit, and then to Denver. I got an art-adjacent day job in visitor services at a museum, and that’s turned into a career I really love. Now, I see making art as one part of a full life. I’m lucky to like my job, and I’m on the board of Arthyve, a nonprofit community built archive. I really like working towards something with other people, a lot of my values have been shaped by those experiences, but I need a good chunk of alone time to balance that out and that’s when I paint. It’s very important to me, but not the most important. I don’t think anything matters more than showing up for the people in your life, and any success I’ve had is because lots of people have gone out of their way to take a chance on me, to help me, to encourage and support me.
Has it been a smooth road?
I’m not always great at putting myself out there; the concept of “the hustle” makes me uncomfortable in a lot of ways. I read something once about how Frank Ocean won’t tour, and how crazy it is that we expect artists to foster all this sensitivity, to make something out of it, share it with us, and then go out and promote and perform it. I think about that a lot, that it’s okay to not do all of those things all the time, certainly not at all at once. From my experience, as long as you keep making work, you’ll keep growing, everything else is secondary to that.
I’ve found a way to build a life that makes lots of room for creativity, but it’s an incredibly delicate balance, and I have the luxury of relatively little responsibility and a lot of support. I’ve always had a safety net and the peace of mind that comes with that, and still, I have a ton of anxiety. From all the conversations we have about work/life balance, it’s clear that it takes a ton of strategy just to maintain our relationships and a job. Anything beyond that – a creative practice, civic engagement, building community- seems so difficult. Work means a lot of different things in my life, and I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to love every kind of work I do. I think everyone should have a steady place they can go to make money, and we should have a lot more control over how work fits into our lives. It shouldn’t run our lives the way it does. I can’t really reconcile the marriage of money and art; there’s usually no money or an insane amount of money in it. After the election, there were all these think pieces about how at least we’ll get some great protest art, and that’s such a weird take to me. I’m speaking very broadly but… Ivanka and Jared have a Dan Colen in their living room. I remember a 2016 article that parsed their collection for signs that they might be the voices of morality in this administration. It’s such a broken system, and it makes me wonder who art is for and who gets to make it. We’ve surely lost a lot of cultures because people with something to say needed to prioritize securing health insurance over making art. So, I would say if you’re committed to making or appreciating art, one of the best ways to support it is to advocate for a society that supports artists.
Please tell us more about what you do, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
The color palette I use is the thread that ties my work together, and most of my paintings are either text based or still lifes. This means I’m either literally spelling it out for the viewer, usually with a joke, or I made something that’s simply pleasing to look at, which I wasn’t always comfortable with. For a long time, I thought I should always be saying something significant, but now I’m very David Byrne, “if I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.” If I have something to add to the discourse I will, but being quiet and making room for other voices is just as important. I’m anti-capitalism, but I’m certainly a major consumer. I love things, I love my belongings, and though I wouldn’t say my paintings are about that it’s the thing I think about most in the creative process. Generally, the things I obsess over (mainly politics and celebrity gossip) aren’t the text or even the subtext of my paintings, but they inform them in a way that really only matters to me. Once I put something out in the world, I like it to just exist, I don’t think anyone should have to know something specific to appreciate a piece of art.
I make paintings for all kinds of reasons, the main one being I feel bad when I don’t. Whenever they show someone making art in a movie, it’s portrayed as this beautiful, intense, instinctual process, and that is so not my experience. There’s definitely been a trend of rejecting and debunking the “artistic genius” trope, which I’m glad about. I don’t think that concept is helpful for anyone. Some paintings are relaxing to make, and getting that first spark of an idea is a real high, but just as often it can be frustrating or boring. Once I’ve planned a painting, I always watch TV or listen to something while I work. I love TV, and this whole thing may just be an excuse to consume a lot of it, but I need something in the background to keep my mind from going in too many directions.
Do you have a lesson or advice you’d like to share with young women just starting out?
Don’t take yourself too seriously, and go out of your way to help other people whenever you can. Surround yourself with people who make you laugh and challenge you. I’ve found that ultimately who I’m working with affects my happiness more than what I’m working on.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.annamillholland.com
- Phone: 7036099592
- Email: annamillholland@gmail.com
- Instagram: animalholland
Image Credit:
Steve Purdham
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