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Anna Duckworth
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Oracle Team USA’s America’s Cup winning skipper Jimmy Spithill
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© Anna Duckworth
Dartmouth Coastal Path by Anna Duckworth
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© Anna Duckworth
Dartmouth Regatta 2011 by Anna Duckworth
Anna Duckworth
Local artist Anna Duckworth was recently described on social media network Instagram by Oracle Team USA’s America’s Cup winning skipper Jimmy Spithill as a ‘legendary artist’. Jimmy was showing his newly purchased America’s Cup painting, which was also described as an ‘incredible piece’ on Twitter by campaign sponsors Oracle.
This is high praise from an exciting source for Anna, whose background is an unusual one for an artist. She was encouraged to drop art at school and pursued an academic career, gaining a physics degree and PhD and working for the electricity supply industry across the UK’s power stations in remote technology and engineering. With a strong interest in people, she later trained as a coach and set up her own executive coaching business.
She and her partner Chris fell in love with Dartmouth while staying with friends here and Anna remembers walking up Southtown, admiring the incredible doorstep view of all those yachts in the harbour and imagining owning their own house together here. They bought their cottage in Swannaton Road in 2004 and their daughter Edi was born the following year. By this time painting was on Anna’s agenda but as a working mum with a new baby, turning it into a reality was still a way off.
The tipping point came when she and Chris spotted artist Sarah Bell painting chilli peppers with a flourish at the Dartmouth Food Festival in 2009. Chris bought Anna a short residential painting course at Sarah’s farm in Kingsteignton for Christmas and in the winter snows, Anna was the only student who turned up. She immersed herself in Sarah’s generous teaching, learnt all sorts of tips and slept more deeply than she had in years. One of the key things Sarah showed her was how to keep acrylic paint wet for several days so that she could snatch some of the short periods of time available between looking after her family and running her business for painting. In the Autumn of that first year, with Edi moving up into the second year of infant school, Anna managed to produce two large canvases; a copy of a Glyn Macey yacht crashing through the waves for Chris and a painting of dolphins for Edi.
Over the next couple of years, two key things happened; Anna’s family and friends started to ask for commissions and Anna realised that she wanted to spend more of her time painting. She dedicated one working day a week to painting and told her business clients about it. She set up her art website and attended one or two local fairs with her work. The one day a week crept up to two, her Bristol attic office gained a ground sheet (which almost protected the floor) and began to look more and more like a studio. Galleries around the country started to take an interest in her work, particularly her sailing and seascape paintings. In the Autumn of 2013, a long-term contract for her coaching business came to an end and by this time, with Dartmouth’s incredible scenery as a regular backdrop, Anna was ready to find out whether she could make a living out of art.
Anna and her family spend as much time as possible at their cottage in Dartmouth, travelling from Bristol at weekends and during school holidays. They plan to move here permanently as soon as Chris’ work situation allows it and Chris is on the look out for their future family home. Anna’s sailing paintings are mostly inspired by Dartmouth’s sailing scene and the 2011 Dartmouth Regatta sailing shots produced by local photographer Andy Carter formed a part of this. Anna particularly loves to create commissions of yachts in action, with wild sea and spray, knowing that her painting will be appreciated by the owners of the boat for many years, and maybe long after the boat has moved on to new seas.
As a keen runner and lover of Dartmouth’s coast path, Anna was also moved by the severe damage caused by the winter storms and is giving the South West Coast Path Association all the profit from her new series of SWCP artwork, to help support the repairs. Anna currently has sailing paintings, prints and greetings cards for sale in Siegle & Co on Smith Street in Dartmouth and sailing themed greetings cards in the Post Office in Kingswear.
When Anna posted her painting of Oracle (titled ‘Burning Desire to Win’), the 2013 Americas Cup winner, on Twitter from her attic studio in Dartmouth she never expected it to generate so much interest around the world. The picture was re-tweeted by sailing magazines and sailors through the night and by morning she was thrilled to find an inbox full of appreciative international twitter messages. One of those in particular caught her eye; her painting had been re-tweeted by America’s Cup winning skipper, Jimmy Spithill himself.
Says Anna, “I’m a complete novice when it comes to Twitter so posting my paintings feels quite an alien thing to do. A friend sold tweeting to me, saying that it gets you in front of people that you wouldn’t normally reach. This was really confirmed for me when, that evening, I received a personal message from Jimmy asking how he could get one of my paintings! I love it when my art finds its rightful home and to have the guy who helmed the winning boat through one of the most amazing comebacks in sports history becoming the owner of the painting ‘Burning Desire to Win’ feels just perfect.
Anna’s blossoming art career had a similar Twitter endorsement when her first ever tweet, featuring her copy of Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’, was ‘favourited’ by the National Gallery. Her real passion is for painting high energy, extreme sports and to capture the buzz of action. “I find that I get lost in my paintings and looking at them takes me into that moment. I sense the thrill of the speed, spray and wind and revel in the feeling of working with a team, fine tuning the boat, surrounded by the elements. I’d love to be on board one of these beauties, careering along at breakneck speed on foils. Painting them is the next best thing. I hope that when owners of my art can’t be on the water, they can re-live the exhilaration of sailing from their armchairs.”
As Anna packs up her latest painting to ship it to San Francisco, home of the 34th America’s Cup defenders, she hopes that Twitter will grow her connections with lovers of sailing and wild sports all over the world.
You can see her work online at www.artbyanna.co.uk, facebook.com/AnnaArtbyanna and Twitter @AnnaArtbyanna.
By the Dart August 2014