Anna Berger Capturing Intimate Moments in Dominant Lines

Anna Berger’s work is about capturing moments of intimacy in simple, concentrated snapshots by using thick, dominant lines and carefully omitting considered areas of detail.

How and why she makes her work is important to Anna. She talks to us about what captures her imagination and inspires the illustrations and paintings she makes as well as going into some of the painting techniques she uses.

I choose human relationships with a focus on the erotic aspect as the subject, exploring intimacy as a communication tool.

It indicates the measure of freedom that a person has acquired. It indicates intellectual control over his instinctive and emotional experiences. It’s archaic, primitive and straightforward.

This second before the kiss to put on pause—tension of a small moment, initial impulse.

Fragmentation and body language are the two main visual tools I use for personal works.

It all starts with a visual frame that comes up in my head from any possible resources: a movie scene, personal experience, the way people talk on the street, a chapter in a Henry Miller book or just random images. All based on my conscious and unconscious perception of that tension of a small moment.

Almost always, I prefer to make a digital image with a Wacom tablet first. That is probably a habit from creating murals when I used a projector to achieve perfection in proportions and speed up productivity when transferring image to wall.

Or it gives the feeling of security that the image will be caught at the right moment and safely saved in the ocean of the internet.

The feeling of applying colour onto surface is vivid. No matter if it’s canvas or wall—the details of material lose the importance the same second, it’s real and happening here right now.

I replace chaotic ink brush strokes with clear acrylic filling and clack lines of oil. That was a big step of accepting materials I always preferred but lost the link to them while studying and exploring.