TALENT SPOT
Anna Cook
From beady-eyed blackbirds and swooping swallows, to owls preparing to pounce and sly forest foxes, paper artist Anna Cook brings to life a menagerie of charismatic creatures from the most basic of materials.
Taking sometimes weeks to create, her beautiful three-dimensional artworks feature animals carefully crafted from layers of individually hand-cut tonal papers framed by thickets of intricately hand-cut paper hedgerow plants and flowers. ‘Paper is such a simple, cheap and versatile medium so I go where my imagination takes me; the possibilities are pretty much endless,’ says Anna about the appeal of crafting with paper.
Having been creative from a young age, it was while working at a picture framers that Anna, based in York, first became interested in paper art. ‘Customers would bring in really delicate, traditional Chinese paper cut scenes and I was struck by how beautifully crafted they were. I suppose I just thought I’d try my hand at it; the first results were very dubious,’ she admits. Six years on and Anna has refined her skills, and what started as a hobby has turned into a blossoming business, which allows her to fuse creative talent with her love of nature.
Indeed her creative process often begins with a walk in the countryside, whether it’s to gather flowers for reference or to observe animal behaviours. ‘While I don’t consider myself a wildlife artist as such, I just love watching how birds twitch around in the undergrowth and I wanted to replicate this,’ she says. ‘I try to capture the personalities of the subjects in their natural habitat.’ Once she has decided on a subject, Anna will then make precise drawings to cut from, ‘or the cutting goes very wrong, very quickly,’ she says. The scalpel is her primary tool, but she also uses embossing and curling tools to give her scenes depth and movement, as well as making use of variations in paper tones. ‘I lose myself to many hours of work and get obsessed with the extra detail and colour.’
While the process is very labour intensive, as ironically ‘there are no cutting corners’ when it comes to creating paper cut artwork, the stunning results are true treasures guaranteed to bring a lifetime of delight, whether a treat for yourself or a thoughtful gift for a loved one. (annacookpaperart.co.uk)