Anja Werner

Anja Werner was born on January 17, 1971. In Meerane/ Germany. She was first apprenticed as a carpenter and then studied Applied Arts at the State´s School for Crafts and Design, Schneeberg (FH) with Prof. Hans Brockhage. She received a diploma for her studies. In 1990, she was awarded a stipend and studied print graphics with Hennar Kätelhön in Soest. In 1991, she went to Tanzania to study wood carving with the Makonde for four months. Since 2001, she works as a freelance art-wood carver. Since 2002 she has worked as lecturer at various Ergotherapy Schools as well as at the FH for Applied Arts at Plauen. Between 2004 and 2006, she continued with her studies at Zwickau and was awarded a second Diploma as designer (wood carving). In 2012, she founded the artist group Art Collektiv Plauen of which she is the chairwoman. The artist Anja Werner splits wood and reveals figures in wood that through her carving receive individuality and personality. Her work evolves from a continuous interplay between her creative faculties and her artistic response to the natural material wood, the vitality and idiosyncrasies of which are sustained during the working process. She develops real and surreal figures of daily life, which she aptly embeds into real and surreal worlds, either as sculptures that stand on pedestals, painted or carved on wooden grounds, or as paintings or as reliefs –half sculpture and half painting. Painting on her wooden grounds with many colours, always respecting the natural, individual structure of the wood, she has created a series of wooden figures called the splitted-wood-series, each unique and as such, Andreas Rudloff says, one does not only buy such a carved figure but “adopts” it.