Anoushka Havinden is an artist and writer. Her visual art focuses mostly on semi-abstract drawing and painting, and her poetry is widely published and has won several awards. She studied Drawing and Painting at Glasgow School of Art, and now lives in Argyll. Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited throughout the UK and internationally, often as part of the Drawing Box group, a group for contemporary artists whose practise includes drawing. Her artwork ‘A River of Names’ is installed at Stockingfield Bridge in Glasgow. Her artworks are an interplay between observation, imagination, and abstraction. Often referencing the body/figures and sensed perception, she is fascinated by pictorial space and composition. Poetic and ambiguous, her work aims to create insight that reveals itself slowly, in layers. Her pictures are a reflection of how it feels to be alive in an ever-changing world.

See Anoushka’s work as part of our annual Summer open call, Something in the Mirage, which runs July 17th to August 8th, featuring an incredible collection of works by twenty nine artists inspired by the dreamlike shimmering of summer sunshine, heat hazes, lingering afterimages, or maybe the momentary glint of something half-seen and half-imagined in the dappled golden light.

Thanks for joining us, Anoushka. Can you walk us through your creative process?
I start with research, gathering images and ideas, often objects that resonate, and bring them to the studio. I’m looking for forms that are visually interesting and have emotional meaning, too. I work from observation and also memory. I then create a lot of drawings and test pieces, working out composition, often using collage and a mix of media, usually fairly small scale. I repeat this many times until arriving at a composition that is interesting, exciting, and has movement. Then I make the finished work, although this makes it all sound much tidier and more straightforward than it is in real life. In real life there are more blood sacrifices, bad tempers, injuries, and accidents.

How did you arrive at the theme of your work?
I made this work while summer wildfires were raging very close to my family’s home. I’d gathered a jug of bright flowers and brought that into the studio. The ambivalence of the beautiful summer and the fear of the wildfires are thrown together in the picture, I aimed to create a space where the fear and the hope and the flowers could co exist, for a time.

Can you elaborate on the significance or symbolism of the chosen title of this piece?
As mortal beings we are always threatened by metaphorical wildfires, by loss. Fata morgana are a perceptual phenomenon that represent how we experience the world – through our ideas, and dreams. So the work is about finitude and being human, really, which seems a lot for a picture of a jug and a chair and a sketch of an imaginary ship, but that’s what I was aiming for.

What challenges did you experience during the creation of your work and how did you overcome them?
It’s not easy to create a picture that successfully encompasses mutually antagonistic elements, such as realist observation and abstract expressionist movement. But the whole enjoyment of making an artwork is creating or reflecting a problem and bashing away at it until something new appears. I don’t know if one resolves a work so much as makes a new problem.

How has your practice changed over time?
I’ve developed a greater and deeper awareness of aesthetic and technical processes. Over the past few years I’ve been looking deeply into composition and pictorial space, especially. Learning is always ongoing, but I think I’ve developed a better understanding of picture making.

Which artists inspire you? Are there non-artistic influences such as literature or music that impact your work?
A thousand inspirations. This week, Roy Oxlade, Ben Nicolson, Giotto, Lil Neilson, from Catterline. Poetry, often, but I work in silence, because I need to be able to think clearly without distraction.

Find out more about Anoushka’s work on Instagram. Something in the Mirage runs at Six Foot Gallery until Friday 8th August 2025.