Anna Child's portfolio

Work samples

Bunny Slope

oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, 2024
Untitled

watercolor monotypes on Arches 300 gsm hot press watercolor paper, each 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support from Virigina Center for the Creative Arts.
Grace's Green

96 x 75 inches, acylic and ink on linen, 2024
Made with support from Woodstock Byrdcliffe Artist Residency.
Save The Date

Oil, acrylic, and flashe on linen, 40 x 30 inches, 2024

About Anna

Anna Child (b. 1978, Camden, South Carolina) is a Baltimore-based artist working in painting and printmaking. Her practice uses abstraction to treat uncertainty as a productive condition rather than a problem to be solved.
Working through disruption—shifts in scale, unfamiliar materials, and parallel processes—Child interrupts fluency to keep attention responsive. Surfaces develop through rupture and repair: layering, scraping, cutting, reversing, and reassembling. Seams, accretions,… more

View Anna's Resume

Paintings: Accumulated Revision

This body of paintings on canvas and linen develops through prolonged revision and sustained decision-making over time. Surfaces are worked, scraped back, repainted, and built up repeatedly, allowing earlier structures to remain embedded within the final image.

Rather than treating revision as correction, these works hold accumulation as a generative condition. Multiple moments of painting coexist within a single surface, producing density, resistance, and texture. Decisions are not erased but carried forward, emphasizing duration and persistence as essential components of meaning.

Bunny Slope

Oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, 2024
Swim Team

Acrylic on linen, 94 x 72 inches, 2024
Made with support from Woodstock Byrdcliffe Artist Residency.
Save the Date

Oil, acrylic, and watercolor on linen, 40 x 30 inches, 2024
Second Harvest

Oil, acrylic, and marble dust on linen, 40 x 30 inches, 2024
Grace's Green

Acrylic and ink on linen, 96 x 75 inches, 2024
Made with support from Woodstock Byrdcliffe Artist Residency.
February Red Throated Warbler

Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches, 2025
Made with support from Virginia Center for Creative Arts.
Fougasse

Oil, acrylic, and marble dust on linen, 40 x 30 inches, 2024
Milky Way

Oil, acrylic, flashe, and marble dust on linen, 40 x 30 inches, 2024

Small Paintings: Parts of a Larger System I

Each painting in this section is conceived as a complete work, developed through close looking, revision, and sustained attention. At the same time, the paintings are made with an awareness of one another, allowing relationships to form through proximity, contrast, and return.

Differences in palette, energy, and finish are not resolved into a single direction. Instead, variation remains active, with no one painting functioning as a conclusion or standard. Decisions made in one work often shift the conditions of the next, allowing meaning to emerge through co-presence rather than hierarchy.

Seen together, the paintings demonstrate how attention moves across difference—how structure, tension, and balance are held collectively rather than contained within a single surface.

Two Lips

Oil and acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 in, 2024
Driving Home from the Airport in March

Oil, acrylic, and flashe on canvas and linen, 8 x 8 inches, 2025
Returning Home after a Trip to the Moon

Acrylic on canvas mounted to board, 7 x 5 in, 2024
Powder Puff

Oil, acrylic, and flashe on canvas and linen, 8 x 8 inches, 2024
Lost Socks

Acrylic and flashe on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2024
Hallux Valgus

Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2024
Oil Change

Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2024
The Goldfish

Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 in, 2024
Luggage Tag

Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2024
Making Space

Acrylic on paper, 10 x 10 inches, 2024

Small Paintings: Parts of a Larger System II

This section extends the inquiry developed in Parts of a Larger System I, continuing the same working logic across a longer duration. Each painting remains autonomous, while differences between works register incrementally through carried-forward decisions.

These paintings are not preparatory studies for larger works. Instead, relationships across scale remain fluid: structural and chromatic language developed in larger paintings often returns to the smaller works, where it can be tested, disrupted, or recalibrated through closer attention.

Rather than proposing progress as improvement, the series emphasizes persistence and adjustment. Relationships across the paintings—echoes, deviations, and pauses—become legible without overriding the integrity of individual works, allowing meaning to emerge through relation, return, and sustained attention over time.

Wrong Notes

Oil, acrylic, and flashe on canvas and linen, 8 x 8 inches, 2025
Swensen's

Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2024
Before Now

Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 9 inches, 2025
Birthday Cake

Acyrlic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2024
The Bow

Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2024
Carboretor Rebuild

Acrylic and flashe on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2024
Dog Ear

Oil and acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2024
Thinking About Wyoming in May in Baltimore in September

Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 9 inches, 2025
The Garden of Mrs. Thwaites

Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2024
Scotch Thistle

Acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8 inches, 2024

Monotypes: Active Roles I

This series of watercolor monotypes approaches variation as a relational process rather than a sequence of isolated images. Each print is made by painting directly onto a plate, allowing the image to dry, and printing it once through an etching press. The result is unique and cannot be revised.

The mediation of the press unsettles habitual ways of seeing and working. Reversal, pressure, and transfer interrupt fluency, requiring decisions to remain responsive rather than corrective. Rather than treating each monotype as a self-contained statement, decisions are carried forward across the series.

Some prints assert strong color or structure, while others remain quieter, resistant, or unresolved. These differences are not corrected. Instead, they establish a field in which each work performs a distinct role—amplifying, destabilizing, or giving space to the others. Meaning emerges through contrast, proximity, and accumulation, as attention moves across difference rather than toward a single resolution.

Untitled

Watercolor monotypes on Arches 300 gsm hot press watercolor paper, each 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support from Virigina Center for the Creative Arts.
Untitled

watercolor monotypes on Arches 300 gsm hot pressed watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025, made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
Untitled

watercolor monotypes on Arches 300 gsm hot pressed watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025, made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
The Garden Steps

watercolor monotypes on Arches 300 gsm hot pressed watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025, made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
Untitled

watercolor monotypes on Arches 300 gsm hot pressed watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025, made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
Ours

watercolor monotypes on Arches 300 gsm hot pressed watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025, made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
Untitled

watercolor monotypes on Arches 300 gsm hot pressed watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025, made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
Untitled

watercolor monotypes on Arches 300 gsm hot pressed watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025, made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
Untitled

watercolor monotypes on Arches 300 gsm hot pressed watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025, made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
Untitled

watercolor monotype on Arches 300 gsm cold pressed watercolor paper, 4 x 6 inches, 2025, made with support from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts

Monotypes: Active Roles II

This section continues the same body of monotypes presented in Active Roles I, staying with a single set of constraints long enough for their consequences to become visible. Painted on the plate and printed once, each work resists revision and carries decisions forward.

Over time, the printing process continues to unsettle visual and working habits. Quieter prints stabilize the field through restraint, while others disrupt it through force. Works that might initially register as awkward or unsuccessful are not corrected; they recalibrate how surrounding prints are read, preventing hierarchy and keeping the series in motion.

Across the sequence, persistence and responsiveness operate as forms of intelligence. Variation, interruption, and unevenness remain active, allowing meaning to emerge through relation and accumulation rather than uniformity or closure.

Untitled

Watercolor monotypes on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Untitled

Watercolor monotypes on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Snow on the Mimosa Tree

Watercolor monotype on Arches 300 gsm hot press watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support from Virigina Center for the Creative Arts.
Untitled

Watercolor monotypes on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Untitled

Watercolor monotypes on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Untitled

Watercolor monotypes on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Untitled

Watercolor monotypes on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Untitled

Watercolor monotypes on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Untitled

Watercolor monotypes on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Untitled

Watercolor monotypes on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 6 x 4 inches, 2025
Made with support of Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Constructed paper paintings

These large-scale works are built from cut, layered, and glued paper substrates, some padded from behind so seams swell and surfaces buckle under pressure. Construction precedes painting, establishing structural conditions that guide subsequent decisions.

Rather than concealing process, the works retain visible joins, accretions, and reversals. Painting unfolds in response to resistance, allowing instability, rupture, and repair to function as generative forces rather than problems to be solved.

Thank You Baltimore

Acrylic on constructed paper support with polypropylene fill, mounted on board, 59 x 46 inches, 2025
Made with support from Jentel Artist Residency.
Excited to Get Home to Baltimore

Acrylic on constructed paper support mounted to board, 81 x 47 inches, 2025
Made with support from Jentel Artist Residency.
Spring Couple

Acrylic on constructed paper support, attached to board, 68 x 46 inches, 2025
Made with support from Chalk Hill Artist Residency.
Warnecke Ranch in April

Acrylic on constructed paper support, 59 x 46 inches, 2025
Made with support from Chalk Hill Artist Residency.
April Wyoming

Acrylic on constructed paper support, 68 x 46 inches, 2025
Made with support from Jentel Artist Residency.
Duvet

Acrylic, ink, and charcoal on constructed paper support, 100 x 80 inches, 2024
Made with support from Maryland State Arts Council.
Pantsuit

Acrylic on constructed paper support, 95 x 66 inches, 2024
Made with support from Vermont Studio Center and Maryland State Arts Council.
The Battle of San Romano

Acrylic on constructed paper support, 95 x 61 inches, 2024
Made with support from Vermont Studio Center and Maryland State Arts Council.

Exhibition: Hiccups

Hiccups brought together paintings, constructed paper works, and serial monotypes within a single spatial field. Rather than separating bodies of work, the installation emphasized accumulation, proximity, and interruption, allowing relationships between scale, surface, and structure to remain visible.

The exhibition treated constraint as a generative condition, extending studio questions into space and testing whether instability, revision, and relational thinking could operate collectively rather than discretely.

installation view, Hiccups, Park View Gallery, Glen Echo Park, Glen Echo, MD, March 2025

with support from Maryland State Arts Council
installation view, Hiccups, Park View Gallery, Glen Echo Park, Glen Echo, MD, March 2025

with support from Maryland State Arts Council
installation view, Hiccups, Park View Gallery, Glen Echo Park, Glen Echo, MD, March 2025

with support from Maryland State Arts Council
Hiccups, installation view

Watercolor monotypes (framed 10 x 8 inches) on acrylic on paper on panel
With support from the Maryland State Arts Council and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Hiccups, installation view
Hiccups, installation view

With support from the Maryland State Arts Council and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Hiccups, installation view
installing Hiccups, Park View Gallery, Glen Echo Park, Glen Echo, MD, March 2025

with support from Maryland State Arts Council

Monotypes: Modular Configuration

This body of watercolor monotypes introduces physical reconfiguration as an active component of the work. Individual prints function as finished pieces, while also remaining responsive to placement, adjacency, and orientation.

Studio images document the monotypes being moved, rotated, and reassembled in different configurations. These shifts are not incidental. Repositioning alters how color, structure, and density are read, requiring attention to remain active and provisional. Meaning is shaped not only by the image itself, but by where and how it is encountered.

This modular approach extends the relational logic of the monotypes from sequence into space. Rather than fixing a single arrangement, the work allows composition to remain contingent, emphasizing movement, feedback, and responsiveness as integral to the practice. The section reflects a growing interest in how parts hold together through relation rather than permanence or final placement.

Hooter and Ernie

Watercolor monotype on Arches 300 gsm watercolor paper, 67 x 62 inches, 2025
Made with support from Virigina Center for the Creative Arts.
Untitled

Process view
Untitled

process view

PS Marlowe prints

This body of monotypes was produced in collaboration with master printer Phil Sanders at PS Marlowe Fine Art Publishers. Working within the discipline of a professional print studio introduced an additional layer of constraint, precision, and shared decision-making.

The collaboration emphasized control, consistency, and finish while remaining in dialogue with the variability central to my practice. These works demonstrate how accumulation and responsiveness can operate within a highly structured environment.

Panna Cotta

Watercolor monotype on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 12 x 9 inches, 2025
Unique Impression
Published by PS Marlowe Fine Art Publishers. Printed by Phil Sanders.
First Burrata

Watercolor monotype on Arches 300 gsm hot pressed watercolor paper, 12 x 9 inches, 2025
Printed by Phil Sanders. Published by PS Marlowe Fine Art Publishers, Asheville, NC, 2025.
Strawberry Toast

Watercolor monotype on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 12 x 9 inches, 2025
Unique Impression
Published by PS Marlowe Fine Art Publishers. Printed by Phil Sanders.
Verona Pavlova

Watercolor monotype on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 12 x 9 inches, 2025
Unique Impression
Published by PS Marlowe Fine Art Publishers. Printed by Phil Sanders.
Warm Olives

Watercolor monotype on 300 gsm Arches hot press watercolor paper, 12 x 9 inches, 2025
Unique Impression
Published by PS Marlowe Fine Art Publishers. Printed by Phil Sanders.

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