Anna Fidler. 2012 Individual Artist Fellow, Oregon Arts Commission.
Photo: Sabina Poole
Originally published January, 2012
Anna Fidler works big. She made a splash with a massive show of works entitled “The Game” at Disjecta where the scale and ambition of the unusual works matched their subject matter: portraits and raw action shots of the professional basketball players of the Portland Trail Blazers. “Oden Dunking” was approximately 8 feet by 6 feet. And she works in unusual ways, layering paper forms like topographical maps, tracing textural lines, allowing bleeding washes. The works are rewarding from far off as familiar pop images; complex and almost confounding close up, as the image devolves into the gestures that make it.
Fidler is preparing a new body of work that will be exhibited at the Portland Art Museum as part of its APEX series that offers solo exhibitions to mid-career regional artists. “Vampires of Oregon” envisions notable 19th and 20th century Oregonians as vampires. Fidler writes, “Energy has been the overarching theme in my work for the past ten years…photosynthesis, electricity, binaural rhythm patterns and their relationship to lucid dreams.” In the case of the vampires, she focuses on the energy exchange in the “transference of the life essence from one being to another.” At the same time, she’s interested in the romanticism associated with the legend of the vampires and the repopularization (yet again) of the vampire legion.
Fidler regularly shows nationally and was included in the 2006 Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum. She’s currently at work on large-scale portraits of female rock icons including Stevie Nicks and Joan Jett.
Courtesy of The Oregon Arts Commission.
Artist Credit: Anna Fidler
Exhibition: Oregon Arts Commission Fellows