CV
ANNA KIRBY
Collage Artist | North Carolina
www.annakirby.com | @annakirby.collage
ARTIST STATEMENT
Anna Kirby resurrects forgotten faces. Working from the remnants of other people's libraries, she assembles composite portraits from mismatched photographs, illustrations, and paintings — then transforms them with oil paint, adding makeup and face paint in colors that have no interest in being subtle. The result is a figure that never existed, yet feels achingly real. Her work is rooted in the emotional realities of female experience: PTSD, abuse, child loss, infertility, and the contested terrain of identity. The portraits are expressive and unflinching, capturing a range of emotion from quiet discomfort to defiant resilience.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2025
Ludington Area Center for the Arts Cut, Paste, Create: A Collage Exhibit
Baton Rouge Gallery (BRG) Surreal Salon 17th Annual Exhibition — hand-picked by Evan Pricco, editor-in-chief of Juxtapoz
2024
National Collage Society 40th Annual Juried Exhibit Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Baltimore, MD
Slater Memorial Museum, Norwich, CT Connecticut Women Artists Annual National Open Juried Show — Juried by Sharon Butler
Ellington-White Contemporary Gallery (EWCG) Artists Who Teach Exhibition, National Juried Online Show — in collaboration with Fayetteville State University
Las Laguna Art Gallery, CA WOMEN IN ART 2024 — Online Exhibition
d'Art Center, Norfolk, VA Fibrous: A Juried National Exhibition of Paper & Textile Artworks — June 22 – July 27, 2024
Yadkin Arts Council 2024 Juried Exhibition — Welborn Gallery and Red Wall Gallery, July 12 – August 30
Webster Arts Gallery, Groves, MO Word and Weft — August 9 – September 13, 2024
Emerge Gallery, Greenville, NC 2024 Schwa Show — Juried by Austin Sheppard
MVA Gallery (Modern Visual Arts) The Essence of a Woman — October 18 – November 20, 2024
Collage Artists of America Interplay — Annual Members Juried Virtual Show, Juried by Nancy Kay Turner
Collage Artists of America What Lies Beneath — Virtual Juried Show, Juried by Kim Abeles
Collage Artists of America Unexpected Outcomes — Virtual Juried Show, Juried by Andrea Burgay
Idaherma Museum of Art Foundation, Princeton, NJ Sixth Annual Juried Exhibition — Juried by Shaun Daley
Arts Council of Wayne County 45th Annual National Juried Art Show — Juried by Sheherazade Thenard
McNeese National Works on Paper Exhibition 38th Annual — Juried by Erika Olinger, Cole Pratt Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2022–2023
Sunset River Gallery, Calabash, NC Girl Power Juried Show — February 10 – March 16, 2024
AWARDS & HONORS
2026 Best of the Net Anthology — selected by Octavio Quintanilla for "I go in and out of sleep to pass the time"
2024 Honorable Mention — Collage Artists of America Interplay Exhibit, awarded by Nancy Kay Turner
2024 Honorable Mention — Yadkin Arts Council 2024 Juried Exhibition
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Apricity Press Issue 10, Summer 2025 — Cover image (The Hand of John the Bachelor) + interior work
Midsummer Dream House Issue 4 — Cover image (Venus Rides the Carousel) + interior work
Cosmic Daffodil Journal "Myth & Metaphor" — Cover image (Offering), February 2024
North American Review Summer 2025, Volume 310, Number 2
CALYX: A Journal of Art and Literature Vol. 35, No. 1
International Human Rights Arts Movement 2025 Third Quarterly Magazine — Enduring Voices: Disabilities, Invisible Illnesses, and Neurodivergence
Tint Journal Spring 2025 + Fall 2025
Pictura Journal April 2025
3Elements Review Issue 46, Spring 2025
Ranger Magazine Early 2025
Sand Hills Literary Magazine 2025
MAYDAY Magazine 2025
The Bitchin' Kitsch April 2025 + July 2025
Waffle Fried Literary Magazine Issue 1 (image also produced as commercial t-shirt, 2025)
Neither Fish Nor Foul Early 2025
Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine 2024
Pink Disco "The Devil," Issue 8, December 2024
RESIDENCIES
2025 Kolaj Magazine Two-Week Residency — New Orleans, LA
PRACTICE
Analog paper collage with oil paint. Works on paper using found ephemera, vintage books, second-hand source materials, photography, painting, and illustration.