Anastasia Doran, Illustrator

I am an artist based in Chester and studying in London. My work is inspired by my long-held interest in memento moris and classes I have taken on Miniature Painting, a traditional art form I began learning during Lockdown.

I work with a variety of materials and recently I have been exploring handmade watercolours and traditional painting and drawing tools through my mentoring in Miniature Painting with Vaishali Prazmari and courses I have taken with the Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts.

My work takes several forms, from my precise and constantly developing Miniature Painting practice to my more experimental sketchbook work. 

Currently one of my main focuses is Miniature Painting, the intricacy and attention to detail required is what I love about this type of artwork.The skills I am developing and improving whilst studying Miniature Painting are a highly valuable element of my artistic practice. 

Another one of my projects is exploring human responses to death in the modern world; the clinical, distant and hidden nature of death today fascinates me because it has created a society where we are reluctant to discuss it and have a culture of denial, affectations simply not present in certain other cultures. My work on this subject is characterised by ambiguous skeletal forms, a colour palette generally focused on dark blues and black and my use of bleach to work back into ink work.