Anna-Wili Highfield’s artist residence

Visiting one of Sydney’s prolific artistic sculptors in the bedrock of a menacing inbound flight path and a throbbing industrialised zone in the inner-west enlivened the prospect of meeting Anna-Wili Highfield in her working studio under a grim grey sky. Yet nowhere was to be found of her address so easily. Down from the train station towards the Princess Highway, only one brick clad building stood solely amongst overdrawn grassfields and unoccupied land that look be have been unhabituated for years.

An ‘Artist Studios for Rent’ sign is the only remote identification to where Highfield resided. The brick building, a late 19th century Victoria terrace leads it white rusty iron gates towards the rear. Peering through the window sill, a solid door opens greeted by Anna-Wili Highfield herself. The 31 year-old artist is immediately congenial who evokes a wide-opened smile who instantly introduces herself and for a cup of tea. Another artist is taking residence with her own practise; the cojoining rooms and their decorative white high ceilings is amassed with unfinished canvasses and paints, pigments of splattered and coarse colour, the living room is camouflaged by works in progress. Highfield leads and guides upstairs to her creative sanctuary – she is mindful of her steps as her second baby (her first a young daughter already at school) is on its way.

The fresh odour of paint permeates as she reveals her small loft. The bare burnished wooden floor boards are just furnished by a working desk and a ladylike table mirror. Highfield only just finished renovating her working environ at the cusp of having invited a group of directors from the French leather goods company Hermès. The stark natural light illuminates her face and clothing cocooning herself in knitwear layering for which she wraps a dark grey buttoned cardigan as a neck shawl. Asked about Hermès, Highfield reservedly pulls back, “I can’t reveal about my latest project although I can tell you it’s for Hermès!” The only clue to what is she composing for her new French client is a series of unfinished paper cotton aviary heads at the tip of her table.

Since Highfield’s youth, she was intimately exposed to the craft and honed skills of puppetry making by her father. “My father created puppetry and the impression from this lead me to become in love with making sculpture.” It’s mistaken that people assumed she had created puppetry herself but the patriarchal effects compelled her to study at the National Art School in Darlinghurst, Sydney. Studying visual arts in painting at one of Sydney’s few well-regarded independent art institutions, she graduated and became a scenic artist for Opera Australia. There her job post-graduation involved paining backdrops and the overarching misc-en-scenes for performing plays.

Anna-Wili Highfield’s Andalusian sculpture ready for a new home

Noticeably behind her silhouette is a gallant looking sculpture. A majestic and mythical Andalusian is standing proudly for which will take into a new home by a beloved customer. It’s a cross-between ‘Night mare’ and ‘White horse’ two other sculpted pieces by Highfield but this latest piece is differentiated by ghostly moon pigments along its crest. Whilst there are small remnants of paper scrapings and torn cotton paper, Highfield abstains from sketching two-dimensionally relying on her caressive hands to jolt nascent sculptural forms. “I am a figurative artist” explains Highfield prizing her representational equine and aviary creatures, “and I like creating portraits and when I find when I am creating, there are human characteristics in my animals that I want to portray.” Her oeuvre of personifying her creatures is both a meticulous and emotionally rewarding process. Cutting individual pieces of archival cotton paper by the Arches paper mill in France, Highfield roughly toiles, scrolls and adeptly builds the animal’s facial and body structure. Be it a wren, parrot or night owl, the process derived is the same using factual scales to replicate the creature in appropriate life size. To bind the cascading structure together, Highfield sews white cotton thread making it intact. Height and scale knows no boundaries as she has worked on such as a Tawny Owl (90cm x 60cm x 35cm), Pegasus bust (100cm x 90cm x 100cm) or the delicate minutia of a Pardalote or Frilled Monarch. A visual triumph for the artist is embodied by a 2 metre wall installation that remains within Australian fashion designer Bianca Spender’s Paddington boutique.

Asked about the differences in ultilising cotton paper and copper piping, the latter another pliable material Highfield has used in the past, she remarks, “ I’m really enjoying cotton paper right now as my medium. I may revisit copper piping at a latter stage but for the moment cotton paper is used for my commissioned work.” By the contorting twists establishing an outline form, two two-metre sculptures by Highfield appear to visually animate by themselves. It is as if she has magically composed these creatures (a dancing horse and giraffe) with sketched rapid-prototyping.

Clearly Anna-Wili Highfield is attracted to her avian and hoofed creatures of which she tries to imbue emotional qualities, “I find there is the beauty of flight and there is also a poetic side to what I do as birds have freedom which I try to capture and their different personalities and spirit.” But just as she painstakingly watercolour paints an encapsulated budgerigar, the beautiful spanned wings of an American Kestral or black inking of an Australian magpie, she categorically rejects it as taxidermy. “I don’t see them as preserving or embalming them” Highfield points out, “I want to keep and make them look alive and I am conscious of this whilst I’m working.” The rough ‘portraits’ of each animal with its visible sewn stitching, tactile cotton surface and papier-mâché like shell, Anna-Wili ingeniously allows admirers to peer into the section engineering of her work. The use of tolerable cotton paper producing a shell construction, Highfield immerses us with inventive materiality replacing animal flesh and bone.

Sydney-based scultpural artist Anna-Wili Highfield

Her mental state of mind is joyfully comprised of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the rhythmic paintings by artists such as Gerhard Richter, Luc Tuymans and Anselm Kiefer and also Bianca Spender’s women’s prêt-a-porter. All of who in many ways have a complex construct to their canvasses that inspire Highfield in terms of palette, volume, line and form. Though, she can been seen clasping a rare volume of William Shakespeare’s first folio and a compendium documenting Australian wildflowers. Downstairs in another working room, Highfield stacks high a series of books supporting her in native birds to which she uses in aid of her sculptures. Asked if she felt a commonality with other contemporary artists such as Melbourne illustrator Kat McLeod (who produced a two-year study on birds titled ‘Bird’ for Melbourne design studio 3Deep) and Australian jewellery designer Jordan Askill (who developed a series of cast horses), Highfield felt unsure. To answer for her, it is her fascination for zoology and with the aforementioned creatives that portray both a delicate and indelible imprint in her portrait sculptures.

A portrait photograph is taken of her nearing the end of her visit. She gleans with affability but feels embarrassed – to not capture her growing womb. Anna-Wili Highfield’s client list grows by day and her pressing new commission for Hermès beckons. As she leads downstairs to a fond farewell and thank you for the visit, she considers her proudest achievement to be her growing family, husband and the opportunity to present her sculptures far and wide. She’s already done so with permanent displays in Hermès Brisbane, various published works and presented in America. For us, we’ve discovered a very fine paper couturier.

Anna-Wili Highfield – www.annawilihighfield.com