Anna Perkins

Art Conservation Resources & New Drawings

This year, I finished my Masters of Liberal Studies, a program that allows you to design your own interdisciplinary courses. I chose to focus on painting conservation, and I researched and wrote about this topic, combining my interests in art materials and art history and exploring new topics like philosophy and women’s studies.

This degree program culminated in the creation of my capstone project, which is published here on this website under the Resources section. Based on the collection of articles and books I read on the topic, I developed a web resource targeted at the interested non-conservator for information about art conservation, both from a materials and from an ethical perspective.

As a paint formulator, I hope that the technical explanations are more detailed than the general information you can generally find online about conservation but not overly specific as to be irrelevant to a non-conservator audience.

Also this year, I focused more on watercolor and drawing, so please take a look at this new artwork.

Written by: Anna

Posted on: December 23, 2025

Continue Reading

Still Life in Oil

After a visit to a New York City thrift store in 2022, I acquired a few new inspiring still life objects and arranged them into a suitable composition. I started this painting over a year ago and unintentionally put it on hold for about six months, as I focused on my masters of liberal studies classes, traveled, and did a few smaller art projects.

This summer, I picked back up where I left off on this painting, all the while feeling I was far away from the end. At 16" x 20", this canvas was on the medium/large side for me, and my progress felt slow. Eventually, a switch flipped in my brain, and I realized this weekend that I was close to finishing, close to being happy with it and noticing fewer and fewer sections to be reworked. Then, I finished it late last night, having no reason to stay up late on the night before labor day other than that I was so close to being done.

I think a key part of feeling satisfied with your progress in a representational painting is abandoning the pursuit of perfect realism, of noticing the lovely way you've painted something that accentuates the way light is bouncing around, the way fabrics are folded - drawing the viewer's eyes to the things you liked about your composition in the first place. There is, of course, a delight in succeeding at rendering something well and true to the reference, but this can't be my only goal, as there would be no reason for it to be a painting instead of a photograph.

Written by: Anna

Posted on: September 4, 2023

Continue Reading

New BIG Acrylic Painting

In 2021, I decided it was about time to make a large acrylic painting. My mom took a lovely photograph of our cat Jasper that inspired me both with its subject and indoor/outdoor light composition. With acrylic, I find I use a lot more layers, both because the paint is more transparent than oils and because I know it will dry faster and I can paint over it on the same day. The layering helped achieve the fluffiness of the cat's fur. Like usual, I spent quite a bit of time on the patterned fabric.

This painting and Rachael were featured in the Golden Employee Art Show along with many other lovely paintings by my coworkers.

Now that I've got a proper large easel, I think more large paintings will be coming (after many hours of labor over several months, of course)!

Written by: Anna

Posted on: January 30, 2022

Continue Reading