Illustrator · Visual Developer
Get to Know the Artist!
Anh Thu Pham-Vu is a fourth-year undergraduate attending the University of North Texas who continues to explore her growth as an artist and a storyteller through narrative illustrations. Majoring in Studio Art: Drawing and Painting, she wishes to pursue a career in illustration/visual development in children’s media and use her works to inspire the next generation to create and dream big.
Pham-Vu consumed a wide span of TV shows, movies, and books throughout her childhood, and her enjoyment of those types of media fueled her desire to learn how to draw and story tell the fictional worlds she imagined. By high school, she discovered a beauty in depicting reality moments and using backgrounds/settings to convey a narrative in her art. She became enamored with the idea that a single artwork could showcase her raw emotions behind the moments in her life that she can never forget as well as the mundane occurrences that she barely noticed. Through her introspection and fervor for fiction, Pham-Vu creates whimsical and playful pieces reminiscent of the emotions and experiences of her life. Her works use different mediums like watercolor, pencil, pen, and digital software with a focus on composition, space, color, and value.
Pham-Vu placed 1st in her Texas District's Congressional Art Competition and had the work exhibited in a group exhibition at the US Capitol. She has also exhibited in UNT CVAD’s Emergence two years in a row, exhibited in Paul Voertman’s 62nd Annual Juried Art Competition, and will have her works exhibited in UNT Libraries’ Special Collections 13th Biennial Artists' Book Competition last spring. Most recently, her work has been displayed in the Greater Denton Art Council's Electric! exhibition.
Artist Statement
When I was kid, art was my escape to imagine a world I yearned to be in. During the early years of my life, I was often by myself, but what always kept me company were the TV shows, movies, and books I immersed myself in over the years. These stories I read and watched over and over made me feel like I was experiencing lands, hearing sounds, and meeting people I never could from my normal life. I wished to be a part of these worlds and even create my own, and soon I realized: what’s stopping me? I picked up my sixty-four multi-packed crayola set and some computer paper and fell in love with creating magical worlds and storytelling fun narratives.
Near the final years of my adolescence, I started to wish that I was able to feel as happy with reality as I was in my imagination. With adulthood just around the corner, I did not know what exactly in reality inspired me. I began to let myself be grounded and started to notice what was actually around me, via past and present. I soon learned to make art that captured moments in my life from the ordinary to the meaningful with watercolor and pen. This process helped me see reality.
Once I started college, I kept going back and forth with choosing between imagination and reality as my drive to create. However, I realized throughout each artwork I was making, I was exploring both at the same time, and throughout each illustration, I was learning and seeing myself more clearly than I ever did. My body of work combines imagination and reality together to embrace the playfulness/curiosity of my own life and the world as a whole. I often use saturated color, space, and form to illustrate curious settings or subjects, and I show interest in composition, structure, and narratives in my pieces.