Anna Syperek

Anna Syperek, born in England of Polish and English parents and raised in Oshawa, Ontario, moved to Antigonish, Nova Scotia in 1971, when she was 20.  Anna graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1980. After the Art College, Anna settled back in the Antigonish area on the shores of St. Georges Bay with her husband, a film-maker, and together they raised a family of three daughters. Anna taught part time in the Art Department at St. Francis Xavier University where she also set up a community print making workshop.

Anna’s work is in the collection of the Canada Council and Nova Scotia Art Banks and numerous public and private collections across Canada, the United States, and Europe. She has received grants from the Canada Council, Nova Scotia Arts Council, and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Anna belongs to the Nova Scotia Printmakers Association, Visual Arts Nova Scotia, and the Society of Antigonish Printmakers. She is the former president of the Nova Scotia Printmakers Association.

Anna has appeared in numerous solo and group shows throughout the Maritimes and the rest of Canada.  In 2005, a large exhibition of her work entitled “Old New Scotland” travelled to four galleries in Scotland, courtesy of the Highland Council of Scotland. More recently, she has twice been selected for the Kingston Prize, a bi-annual national portrait competition shown in The Royal Ontario Museum and the Firehall Theatre Gallery.

Artist Statement

Jack Chambers (Canadian artist- 1931-1978) once said “Realism is not a technique. It is a self-effacing celebration of the Universe.” My 2024 exhibition is just about that. I am responding, in the way that is most natural to me, to the beauty (dare I say it) that I see all around me where I live.

I enjoy working in different media, and painting is much freer than etching, which takes much thought and preplanning to work with, or get around, the technical limitations and challenges. But painting, to me, almost plans itself as I sit on location. So much happens as I sit there, with weather, bugs, things growing, shadows moving, that I feel that I am working with the subject that I’m painting. Even with oils that are too big to paint on location, I draw a detailed sketch that helps me get the feel of what it was like being there.

Much of what I paint is just around my house – looking out the window at breakfast , or something I see on the way in to town. Sometimes, I’m hit over the head with an image that I just must paint, or sometimes I see the same thing over and over and then suddenly I’m seeing it in a different way, and what I see is full of meaning, significance and beauty. I try to recreate that “seeing”, revealing the truth, unity and coherence of everyday life.

One of my favourite artists, David Milne, once said, “Feeling is the power that drives art. There doesn’t seem to be a more understandable word for it, though there are others that give something of the idea: aesthetic emotion, quickening, bringing to life. Or call it love, not love of man or woman or home or country or any material thing, but love without an object- intransitive love."

- Anna Syperek, 2024

View Anna's printmaking work here