Past Exhibitions and Shows
July 2024 - Urban Art Brixton 2024
June 2024 - Open Art Show - Art exhibition - The Tabernacle
May 2024 - Dulwich Artists' Open House 2024 - Kingswood Arts
July 2023 - Urban Art Fair 2023 (Brixton)
June 2023 - Crystal Palace Calling
May 2023 - Dulwich Artists' Open House 2023 - Kingswood Arts
May 2023 - The Paxton Centre (Anerley)
11th - 13th - November 2022 - Art Love Life (Life at Brown & Green)
16th - June - 2022 - Urban Art Fair (Brixton)
24th - 26th - June 2022 - Art-titude at The Paxton (Gipsy Hill)
26th - 28th - November 2021 - Affordable Art Fayre - Upper Norwood Library (Crystal Palace)
Ana Gallego is a Spanish-born watercolour architectural artist based in South London.
Ana originally studied Industrial Engineering and Product Design and ended up working designing products and processes for the Medical Device industry for more than 10 years, but she always had an enormous interest in creative and manual skills such as sewing, knitting, woodworking, photograph, and baking.
Over the pandemic, Ana picked up some brushes and decided to walk around the streets of South London to sketch buildings along the way, inspired by Urban Sketchers.
In 2021, she decided to pause her career in engineering to concentrate on illustration and become a full-time artist.
Since then, Ana has produced a series of more than 170 illustrations from buildings around London and even the rest of the UK, focusing on those which are the most meaningful to their communities.
Her work focuses on researching and illustrating the buildings and small businesses that are part of the fabric that forms a community, both old and new, as a snapshot in time.
Photos by Becky Wood and Fiona Russell
"My collection has become an accidental archive and tribute of the High Street.
As time goes buy, places that I have painted have announced that they will be closing their door.
I am glad to have painted them and they now form part of my little collection forever."
"On my paints, I want to make a point to showcase imperfection: a bit of chipped paint, crack in the rendering or a dangling cable tell a story about the history of the building."
"This is my favourite part of the process: these little details, sometimes so small that they are almost invisible"
"As the project grows, I am realising the importance of showcasing as many small businesses as I can. Promoting small independent business is very important for our communities and our culture."
Environment
The environment is important to me.
All my prints are 100% cotton which is recyclable.
Some of my prints are sold with a cardboard backing also recyclable as well as my shipping envelopes, all made 100% of paper and recycled paper.
In order to maintain the quality and preserve the prints and greeting cards, I wrap them in cellophane bags. These cello bags are made of Nativa, which is 100% compostable as per EN13432 in industrial composting systems.
When shipping framed commissions, all my packaging is post-consumer cardboard and due to this, it may have old labels and some signs of wear, but I try to reuse as much as possible what already exists in my household, to prevent from using up more brand new packaging.