Anna Maria Drutzel is an interdisciplinary artist, poet and maker living and working just outside Melbourne, Australia.
“My work is an act of storytelling: it presents the darker side of the fairy tale. With nostalgia for a more romantic era and harboring impossible dreams of Utopia, I perpetually question beauty and deconstruct the imagery of man-made and natural worlds. My research exists as a diverse, varied and prolific field guide of extensive explorations and interests that weaves together a lifetime of inspiration, creativity and philosophy to create a rich archive of personal symbolism and historical reference; this archive becomes the language through which the artist in me speaks.
A bohemian, an outsider, a visionary artist, whose practice is imbued with a social conscience and informed by my everyday Life On Earth – I continuously raise my voice against injustice and strive to tread gently on this precious Earth.
An avid collector of old things, beautiful things, strange and curious things, I am inspired by the work of artists as diverse as Ernst Haeckel, Rosalie Gascoigne, Joseph Cornell, Henry Darger, Leonora Carrington, Joy Hester, Louise Bourgeois, Kara Walker, Andy Goldsworthy, among many others. Dada, Surrealism, Bauhaus Design and the wave of contemporary illustration and collage that's flooding the web right now also inspire and inform my work as do 'Primitive' Art, Folk Art, Art Brut, Naïve, Tribal and Outsider Art, and a deep love for the art and ways of children.
Poetess, writer of everyday words, modern myth-maker.
I am a most passionate reader and researcher with a diverse and extensive professional background in community engagement, libraries, costume, theatre, millinery, street performance, workshop delivery, festivals, curating, support work, markets. A single mother and homeschooler - I am a sensitive woman with a passion for seeking out and bearing witness to beauty in places, people, objects that are often times overlooked.”
I believe art to be a way of life.
To quote the artist "I would say that Art is my Religion". "
