Meet Anna Fidler

 

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Anna Fidler. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Anna, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

For most of my adult life I’ve understood that I will have kidney failure in mid-life. Despite this challenge, I am not defined by it. The more important parts of my life include being an artist, having a career in higher education and being a single mother to my 14 year oId daughter.

I have a daily art practice. It’s a ritual and it keeps me grounded. I wake up early so I can see the first light of the day. I throw on my long, black painting dress, make a just-cooked egg– the kind with the orange yolk and a toasted bagel, pick cherries from the tree in the summer, make a cup of hot coffee and drink two glasses of water. Next comes the physical wake-up– the weights, crunches, squats, the plank that gets my body ready to create. By this time there is sun (or in the winter, rain because I live in the Pacific Northwest) and I feel ready to focus my attention on creativity. I enter the studio. These first-creative actions might include hand-drawn grids, laying out a palette of gouache colors, or stretching a linen canvas. Preliminary activities are part of the ritual– they build the focus. Then I really begin. Sometimes I work large– like six by sixteen feet and other times much smaller like a postcard. I am an intuitive worker and many times I just have an idea that comes into focus without any planning. Other times, I get a burst of energy that requires numerous preliminary paintings, notes, research and conversations with artist-friends. Painting, for me, is an essential part of the rhythm of my day. There is rarely a day that I don’t paint. Sometimes I only have a half an hour and other days I forget about time altogether and the hours melt together and sun goes down. I paint everyday so that I never leave the creative mindset. Ritual helps eliminate distraction– so that all of the newness is focused on creativity.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am an artist, a professor of art at Oregon State University and I am the director of JumpstART, a precollege art program at OSU.

I knew I would be an artist from the beginning. I received a scholarship to attend Interlochen Center for the Arts during high school, where I studied creative writing but fell in love with painting. After I received a BFA in Painting in my home state of Michigan, I moved to Portland where I played in numerous bands, released albums and toured; all-the-while maintaining a dedicated art practice. When I went to grad school, I put the band on hold and concentrated on visual art. Recently, I have begun playing music again—programming drum machines, playing vintage keyboards. For me, the musical mindset is similar to making visual art—time disappears and intuition rules.

I have built a career in painting with exhibitions of my work in galleries and museums including the Portland Art Museum. the Boise Art Museum and The Schneider Museum of Art among many others.

My work is a dialogue with the past—a way of channeling forgotten energies and exploring realms just beyond our grasp. Drawing inspiration from early twentieth-century Spiritualists, I aim to invent machinery for spiritual ascension—objects, spaces, and paintings that offer portals to other dimensions.

Precision is at the heart of everything I create, but my methods currently diverge in two distinct directions, each of which seeks to evoke the transcendental in different ways. I construct bodies from layers of glued paper to embody the energy of a person—their heat, emotions, and life experiences. These dimensional silhouettes are influenced by figures such as Dada artist Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, modern dancer Isadora Duncan, and poet Lord Byron, as well as photographs of individuals from my community. The work is research-driven, exploring the intersection of energy, history, and form.

My current project, Spirit Elevators, marks a shift to gouache on linen. This series, also inspired by early 20th-century Spiritualism, imagines machinery designed for spiritual ascension. My “spirit elevators” serve as portals for humans, animals, and creatures to transcend to another realm after their earthly journey. This work delves into themes of transcendence, transformation, and the crossing of boundaries between the physical and spiritual

Artistically, I had a busy 2024—showing in New York City at SHRINE in a group show, the Bay Area at Johansson Projects and PDX Contemporary in Portland.

I balance my art career with my role as the director of JumpstART, a precollege art program at Oregon State University. Since the 90’s JumpstART has been a cherished precollege art program in the Pacific Northwest. I work to identify students in underserved populations for scholarship, regularly visiting many schools around the region and I maintain contact with teachers who assist me with recommendations for scholarship, their advice opening doors to those who otherwise would not be able to participate in a college-level art program. We offer classes in painting, drawing, sculpture, graphic design, sequential art/comics and photography. High school aged students from all over the country attend and return year after year. I find it extremely fulfilling to serve the community in this way.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Concentrate on the things that bring you joy. Work hard and don’t overthink. Long walks, baths, and conversation can lead to great ideas that move you forward. Creativity is growth so don’t stop with what works; go further.

For me creativity is play. It is both stimulating and challenging. My advice to young artists is to dance more in the studio, to feel the physicality of their creativity, to meet like-minded people and to dream both big and small. Go for walks and notice the cats, who are meditating in their windows and try entering that state of mind. Read books in book stores, sunbathe while reading about the Bauhaus, swim in cold freshwater, conduct experiments like eating dark chocolate in the sunshine to see if you sneeze, stay up past your bedtime and start art movements.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

My biggest challenge is my need for a kidney transplant. I discovered when I was in my mid-twenties that I have polycystic kidney disease, an inherited disease. My mother was the first and only person diagnosed with this disease in my family and thankfully after three years of dialysis she received a deceased donor kidney that has been functioning well for over twenty-four years. My dream is to find a donor before I require dialysis, so that I can continue teaching art full-time, travel to my favorite cities (Paris, NYC, LA and so many more!), build upon my thirty-year career of creating + exhibiting artwork in museums and galleries, and most importantly spend time with my daughter.

As a single parent for over nine years, I have successfully built a life for us in Oregon with a great community of close friends. I love my job (this is my 20th year in higher ed.) and wish to continue educating students who have big, beautiful dreams of creative pursuits. Once I have a kidney transplant, I will feel hopeful that I can realize these goals. I have more information on how to donate in my National Kidney Registry microsite: https://nkr.org/LPM459

Contact Info:

Image Credits

The first portrait (with artwork behind me in studio), I took.
All other portraits are photo credit: Holly Andres
All artwork is photo credit: David Paul Bayles

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