Visiting the space where Anna Liber Lewis lets go.

When entering Anna Liber Lewis’s studio, you’re first greeted by a drawing of a reclining figure stuck on the door; an explicitly seductive nude, sketched in an assortment of vivid colours. It’s a display reminiscent of a modern-day goddess. In fact, her entire studio is a curated collection of very direct male and female representations of genitalia, along with disguised motifs and camouflaged symbols that serve as the foundation for artist Anna Liber Lewis revealing and concealing approach to her practice. The artist was brought up in south London, and spent a great deal of her youth in Brixton, where her shared studio space is currently located, as part of Acme Studios artistic developing initiative. “I’m happy to be around this area again. I love working in Stockwell, and the studio has some great people working here. I love a cuppa with a studio chum if they’re knocking about” says Anna, pointing out “But it is a place of work, so most of the time we all just get our heads down and get on with it.” When answering a question about her studio space, the artist smiles and brings out how she is excited she is by the studio’s restrictions and its intimacy. “The private space of the painter in the studio: confronting the rectangle; the fabric held taught; the space here between us, tension in nothing, touching, not touching: it’s what gets me off.” says Anna, highlighting the physical feelings between herself, her studio space, and what she paints; much of it coming from the gut.