Annie Mar is an artist and illustrator based in Cork City. She produces commissioned illustrations and animations, facilitates workshops and has her own artistic practice. Annie collaborates regularly with animator Aaron Ross on a diverse range of projects, always with an ecological focus. Most recently, they completed a three-part fully illustrated animation series for the Irish Parks and Wildlife Service on Irish peatlands. Annie and Aaron collaborate frequently with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) on their Untangled video series. She completed the Sample-Studios Summer Residency in Cork College of FET, and is one of the main founders and organisers of the Cork Zine Festival.

During this residency, she developed a new body of work, using the time to strengthen themes within her practice, centering on a set of drawers and unfinished paintings she inherited from her grandfather’s studio, untouched for eighteen years since his death. Through painting and drawing, the Annie Mar explores items connected to her grandfather in this set of drawers and more broadly, how cultures remain close to their dead and the symbolic objects that abet this attachment.

She also delivered a series of workshops titled ‘Special Things’ in Triskel Sample Project Space throughout the residency where she will engage fellow Sample-Studios members as well as the public and members of the Cork Cultural Companions Network, an organisation that connects their community of older people to events in the city and county. These workshops produced drawings for the ‘Special Things’ zine, which was launched in Triskel during the exhibition period.

The residency allowed for research into folklore, beliefs and customs around death and cultural talismanic objects. Inspired by the work of Leonora Carrington and Frida Kahlo. Annie spent her residency exploring the symbolism and spirituality in their painting and used this as a guide for developing her own individual symbolism within her art practice.