Anna Kostanian

The Art of ANNA KOSTANIAN Anna Kostanian was born in Yerevan, Armenia and moved to Los Angeles, California when she was only 5. Her most vivid memory of her childhood in Armenia was a moment when her neighbor recognized her childish scrabbling as a beautiful drawing and proclaimed her to be an artist. She has carried this memory with her over the years and it is perhaps one of the reasons why she is an artist today. Anna’s natural artistic capabilities were enhanced and sharpened through private mentoring and her conceptual ideas were honored at Otis College of Art and Design. While Anna has graduated from Otis In 2007 she still receives mentoring as she feels you can always better your skills. Her exploration of identity is what fuels her work with intense meaning and symbolism. Anna’s upbringing in a multicultural society greatly influenced her perception of a woman’s role in society. As a result, Anna focuses most on the implications of being a woman in such a society. Her work on Dura-Lar is highly symbolic. The transparent, plastic provides a surface on which she can apply and remove paint. Each layer of paint stains the surface and contributes to the final image, the way layers of experience form an identity. Experiences are essential to a person’s identity, but some experiences are off limits to individuals. Exploration of sexuality was forbidden in the culture Anna grew up in, and so she uses painting as a vicarious means of experience. This experience is not her own, but belongs to viewers of her work as well. As an Armenian-American woman, Anna’s identity has been shaped by two cultures that are extremely different. Her viewers come from the same multicultural society, so Anna seeks out similarities between them and uses the common ground to provoke thought. Death, the passing of time and the human skeleton are featured most often. Death and time provoke thoughts and feelings in all viewers because they are perhaps the only two phenomena that all humans experience. Anna’s primary goal as an artist is to provoke thought, and she finds that this is done best by pointing viewers toward universal experience. Anna’s work has been featured in Celebrity Society Magazine as “Artist Spotlight” she has exhibited in galleries such as The G-Spot, Godo Gallery, 2nd Street Cigars and Gallery, Bolsky Gallery, she has also exhibited and participated with live painting performances at prominent Hollywood clubs such as Supperclub, Tru of Hollywood and the Geisha House. Anna’s work has appeared in juried shows at Otis College of Art and Design. She works as a commissioned artist to complete works in both conceptual and portraiture. Her tribute to the Armenian Genocide was voted as “Best Representation of Being or Telling the Story of Survival” in a juried competition called “Survivor” in two consecutive years, 2010 and 2011. Copyright 2011 | Anna Kostanian