Anna Pearson’s work moves between the intimate and the public. She builds textured studio paintings through tactile layers of color and designs large-scale murals in conversation with the spaces and communities around them. Born and raised in Ukraine and now working as a full-time artist and muralist in Southern California, Pearson brings together European romanticism, West Coast light, and a deep artistic sensitivity to memory, belonging, fragility, and resilience. Across portraits, florals, architecture, and public walls, her work holds emotional traces of the people and places she depicts. In this conversation, she reflects on creating moments of calm in an overstimulated world, the visual language that shapes her practice, and the responsibility of making public art that becomes part of a community’s daily landscape.
The Interview
Can you introduce yourself and describe the work you’re making right now?
My name is Anna Pearson. I was born and raised in Ukraine. For several years now, I’ve worked in Southern California as a full-time muralist and artist. I create public art pieces and small studio work. Shifting between those two practices is really something I enjoy because it allows me to explore ideas in my studio and then translate them onto a bigger scale.
Yes, your work moves between intimate paintings and large scale murals. Do you feel like these are separate practices or are they all one of the same visual language?
Well, in many ways, they are different practices. Murals are collaborative and site-specific. They need to respond to client, community, and physical space… And studio work is more personal and intuitive. But they do share the same visual language. I often use florals, organic shapes, and some sense of transformation and movement. I like to include that in everything I create. So those ideas just translate from the studio to a bigger scale. Whether it’s a mural or painting in a gallery, I’m exploring similar emotions and trying to communicate with the viewer using a similar visual language.
You mentioned that you want to create a moment of calm, stillness, nostalgia, and transformation with your work. What is it that draws you to those emotional spaces?
We are so overwhelmed on a daily basis with noise, stimulation, information. I think we all crave that moment of calm connection. I want to create that pause, even for a moment, for the person who sees it to take a break, take a small pause, and feel fully present.
Looking at the paint surface itself, it seems you work with a lot of texture and layers and even gold leaf. Can you walk us through your process and how a piece develops?
When I’m working on painting, I love to experiment with materials. I don’t even really know what the final image will be or where it will be. I just continue building and experimenting… but often I have a clear vision of what I want to create. For example, in my piece ‘Before the Awakening,’ I built texture intentionally in the wings, so it would feel almost sculptural, very physical and present, again playing on the idea of transformation and making it more three-dimensional, reinforcing the idea of emergence and transformation for this specific piece.
Often, I want to create texture first, and that leads me, leads the piece, because paint interacts with texture in unexpected ways, sometimes leading to surprises in the process.
When you say you’re creating sort of a sculpture, that makes it feel a little bit tactile to me. Do you encourage people to touch your works? Do you want them to physically interact with it?
Absolutely. I absolutely don’t think that a painting should be no touch, like in a museum. This is a modern art. I want people to really feel it and interact with it, so I don’t mind people touching it.
Your biography describes your work as blending European romanticism with contemporary West Coast color and light. Can you talk a little bit about that combination and what it means to you?
I spent most of my life in Ukraine and that cultural background, of course, deeply influenced everything I do, how I see beauty, my storytelling and symbolism. At the same time, when I came to the United States, the West Coast openness, the colors, the ocean, the culture also had a huge influence on me. It shows in my color choices, the subjects I use in my artworks. So I think my work truly lives between those two worlds, and that’s one of the things I love most about the San Diego art community. There’s a diversity of perspectives that people bring to their work.
As a Ukrainian-born artist living in San Diego, how do memory, belonging, fragility, and resilience shape your current work?
Those ideas are really at the center of everything I do, and immigration changes the way you think about home, identity, belonging. You’re constantly carrying memories about one place while trying to live life in another place. And that made me very interested in the ideas of transformation and resilience. Memory is something that allows us to understand who we are, where we came from. At the same time, it can be very fragile, shifting all the time, evolving into something else. My work often explores that tension between holding on and moving forward. Trying to capture that feeling.
You work with quite a wide variety of genres from portraits to florals to architecture. Is there something that connects those for you?
Yes, absolutely. It’s traces of human presence. That connects all the subjects I’m interested in. Portraits tell stories about people, identity, their memories.
Florals can express the idea of impermanence, fragility. They add a lot of movement and color. They also can tell stories about places, like the plants that grow in specific places.
Architecture holds memories and reflects the lives of the people who pass through those spaces.
So it all kind of looks different on the surface, but it’s really about the idea of human presence, connection, and stories.
Can you talk a little bit about your upcoming projects? What excites you about them? What challenges you about them?
Well, every commissioned work is a challenge. You need to please the client. You need to listen to the community. But, especially if it’s public art, it’s exciting to create something for the community that will truly belong to the community.
Right now, I’m working on a couple projects, some private commissions, and public art pieces. They’re still in early stages, so it’s too early to talk specifics about those projects… But I’m excited about them. For me, they’re a way to give back to the community.
We’ll just have to wait and see, I guess. But that’s really interesting because you create work about people living in spaces and now you’re actually creating that artwork in a space that people are going to interact with.
So it’s a full circle thing… And that’s the most beautiful thing about community art or public art because it becomes part of a landscape. People interact with it. People see it during their commute. Kids grow up with it. Visitors go take pictures with it and identify it with the place. So it becomes part of the framework of the fabric of the community.
You mentioned a potential solo project centered around witnessing?
I’m really interested in building a body of work that could be a solo exhibition. To me, the theme of witnessing is very interesting because in our fast culture, with fast consumption of information, we sometimes don’t even pay attention. There’s also a nuance in witnessing and taking action, like bystander syndrome when people actually witness something but don’t act on it. So I’m trying to find a visual interpretation to explore that theme. In this very fast-paced information culture, actually paying attention and taking action feels almost like an act of rebellion.
Looking ahead, do you have any type of work you’re interested in pursuing more: commissions, public art, collaborations?
All of the above. I’m interested in opportunities that allow me to continue growing both as muralist and studio artist. On the public art side, I’d love to work on larger-scale community projects that combine strong visual storytelling with meaningful local engagement. I would love to connect with architects, designers, organizations, and developers that could provide me with more opportunities for placemaking. As a studio artist, I’m looking forward to exhibiting more work, developing a cohesive solo exhibition, connecting with curators, collectors, fellow artists… and more than anything, I’m excited to build relationships in the San Diego art community to see where those conversations will take me.
About Anna Pearson
Anna Pearson is a Ukrainian-born, San Diego–based visual artist and muralist whose work blends European romanticism with contemporary West Coast color and light. Known for her textured surfaces, layered techniques, and refined use of gold leaf and trompe l’oeil elements, she creates both intimate paintings and large-scale murals that evoke emotion, memory, and atmosphere.
Her murals can be found throughout Southern California, including installations for the Hotel del Coronado and the Regent Hotel in Santa Monica, as well as numerous public and private commissions across the San Diego region. She has painted community-focused projects, contributed to arts initiatives throughout California and Nevada, and frequently collaborates with fellow artist Ira Cosmos on upscale, high-impact mural work.
Pearson’s fine art practice spans figurative portraits, florals, and architectural scenes, unified by a visual language that centers light, texture, and mood. She continues to exhibit her work in galleries, pop-ups, and cultural spaces, including recent exhibitions at UCSD Park & Market.(2025)
Connect with this Artist
Interested in working with Anna Pearson on a mural, public art project, hospitality space, or community-centered creative activation? Explore her profile on the San Diego Artist Network and connect with her directly.
