Anna Timmerman is an artist and gardener living in New Orleans, Louisiana. Raised on a farm in rural Michigan, Timmerman developed an aptitude for gardening early on, learning from three generations of master gardeners within the family. At Michigan State University she studied Crop and Soil Sciences for two years before transferring to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Drawing and Painting.

Timmerman’s paintings are made in traditional egg tempera, utilizing eggs from a backyard chicken flock. Early works focused on the relationship between natural landscapes and impossible situations, informed in large part by the landscape surrounding the Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist’s Residency program in Saugatuck, Michigan. Following graduation from SAIC, she began working for some of Chicago’s top chefs and restaurants as a private gardener, supplying vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers. Clients included Rick Bayless (XOCO, Frontera Grill, Topolobampo), Restaurateur Nicolas Kokonas (Alinea, Next, The Aviary), among others.

In 2012 Timmerman moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where her current painting studio and gardening practice are located. New Orleans offers a sub-tropical growing climate, and supportive local arts community. Timmerman’s current egg tempera works reflect her time spent in gardens around the city, and tend to contain both examples of local flora and hybrid creations not found in nature. Her paintings work as documentation of a diverse and ever changing garden history of the Gulf South.

Timmerman’s gardening practice is a collaboration with SAIC 2011 alumni Cassidy Stock (BFA), and includes many private historic Garden District homes, the Museum of the Civil War Garden, the Pitot House Museum Gardens, and several traditional Creole kitchen gardens or potagers. Timmerman and Stock’s work with physical gardens has begun to develop into a collaborative art practice, blurring the line between studio and garden.

Anna Timmerman has been awarded the Joe Quattlebaum Distinguished Fellowship for Southern Arts at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences in northeastern Georgia in June of 2014. Her curatorial projects have been presented in gallery spaces throughout the country, alternative site specific locations in the city of New Orleans, the NADA Art Chicago Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art (NEXT Art Fair), and several online projects.