Melbourne based artist and illustrator Anna Hoyle has both talent and a sense of humor as evidenced by her series of gouache paintings of imagined books. Painted on paper with such tongue-in-cheek titles such as My Clothes Hate Me, Ugly Hair Since Grade Two and Goodbye My Love and Don’t Follow Me Anymore, the art resembles books you often find marked down on carts outside of bookstores.
Useless Books by Anna Hoyle
Not unlike the impressive photo realistic paintings of vintage board games by artist Tim Liddy, the books appear tattered, worn and some are even embellished with marked down price stickers. The charming naivete of the covers is reminiscent of Little Golden Books while the titles are a humorous and edgy juxtaposition to the painting style.
Gift Wrap and Greeting Cards
She also sells greeting cards and wrapping paper (below) she has made from her various pieces in her etsy store.
In some exciting news Anna’s self-portrait, created for the 50K National Artist’s Self Portraiture exhibition at the University of Queensland, was recently purchased by the University.
About the artist (in her own words):
Hello and welcome from my over stuffed studio…
I love painting silly serious books, junky ads, and silly drawings.
I have a long history of collecting words, phrases and objects and gadgets of our consumer culture. In 1991, I completed a suite of etchings and lithographs as part of my Bachelor of Education in Visual Arts that was inspired by car and panty liner advertising and chockas full of related text and lingo. My acest-best first job was as a ticket writer, writing little signs for a chocolate company… and I fell in love with type, layout and the ‘look’ of words. I kept making art and wondering how it all sat with my graphic, illustrative tendency and love of advertising and consumerism…Andy Warhol, Maira Kalmain, was that you I spotted in Smith st in Melbourne? (no probably not) Why did I walk past you guys….?
I now have a Masters in Fine Art from Monash University where I completed a too large 3 metre square drawing called Power Moai Buns ‘n’ Thighs (shown at Nellie Castan Gallery in 2008) and a dissertation in lovely yellow binding titled ‘Love my Leafblower, Worship my Spartan Sports Power Tower: The Art of Synthetic Ecologies’ Given that my Honours year thesis (1999) at Victorian College of the Arts was titled ‘Too much Stuff: Where does it come from and What to do with it’, I have realised after many years of fluffy business that I love long silly titles and words as much as images.
From 1999-2009, I immersed myself in tight ink drawings of chinoiserie and suburban motifs (for which I was lucky enough to get several art prizes), Recently I have worked my darned little sockettes off to bring illustration, design, language, and text to the fore in my art making and illustration practice.
My work is in the following collections: The National Gallery of Australia, Artbank, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Grafton Regional Gallery, Melbourne University,
La Trobe University, SBS at Federation Square, City of Yarra, City of Banyule, MLC, and Kedumba Contemporary Drawing collection, NSW, The University of Queensland,
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www.annahoyle.com
• Follow Anna Hoyle on Instagram also at @annahoyleillustration
all images © and courtesy of Anna Hoyle