Anna Cowie

Anna Cowie’s work explores the idea of Love River Swims — love as something carried, shared, and passed through generations. Women swimming recur throughout the work as expressions of movement, presence, and self-possession, held within water as both environment and metaphor.
Her relationship with water is shaped by place and lived experience. Growing up in New Zealand, the sea represented freedom and immersion. Now based in Cambridge, she swims in the River Cam — a slower, quieter current that reflects a different rhythm of life. These landscapes inform the emotional language of the work, connecting memory, place, and time.

Foliage and wildflowers from the Cambridge meadows appear as markers of continuity, grounding the work in lived experience. While rooted in personal narrative, the imagery opens onto shared ideas of relationship, intimacy, and inherited love.

Her approach is also informed by her family heritage connected to William Morris, whose belief in nature, craftsmanship, and meaning embedded in everyday life continues to shape her use of pattern, material, and storytelling.