Ana Zoob (b. 1995) is a painter, printmaker and theatre practitioner based between Lewes and South London. The contrasting urban and rural environments coexist in her work, which explores the profound effect that our urban existence has both on us and the planet. She studied History at Cambridge University, where she put her creative passion into theatre-making and large-scale immersive event design. She then studied for a master’s degree at Camberwell College of Art. Here she brought her interest in global connectivity and story-telling from multiple perspectives to printmaking. Ana discovered a love of minutely detailed steel-plate etching, which she combines with vast abstract expressionist oil painting in innovative and experimental ways. She has continued to bring her art to theatre-making, and in 2020-21, designed and animated a critically acclaimed film and play about the pioneering Environmentalist Rachel Carson, which enjoyed a successful London tour.
Ana graduated in 2021, was shortlisted for the Glyndebourne Tour Competition and received the Artichoke Print Award and Clifford Chance Exhibition Award for her final piece entitled ‘Wander’. This vertiginous 9-meter-long abstract oil painting with an enormous ink cityscape spanning the entire piece is currently on display as part of Ana’s first London solo show at 10 Gresham Street this summer.
‘I believe that a city is more than its streets, buildings, and open spaces. It is the sum of collective experiences; it is layered, fragmented, and ever-changing. In London, I am always stumbling on contradictions: order and chaos, beauty and horror, organic and unnatural. In response, I create dynamic abstract oil paintings, detailed urban etchings, and sprawling digital collages. Sometimes I combine all three mediums to depict the urban world from multiple viewpoints at once, to engage with both the joy and the darkness.’