Liv Aanrud (b. 1979) is a textile artist living in Los Angeles. Her punch needle embroidery expands into a maximalist, vibrant realm of storytelling through patterns, symbols, and layered depictions of the surrounding world. Inventiveness and humor combine with surreal, stream-of-consciousness worldbuilding to create portraits that reveal themselves through a slow visual play. Beneath their exuberant color and playful imagery, Aanrud’s works are deliberate and painstakingly constructed, bringing together the immediacy of drawing with the patience, repetition, and physicality of textile craft.
Aanrud earned her B.F.A. in Painting from the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire and her M.F.A. from Rutgers University. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point, Kravets Wehby Gallery (NYC), Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects (NYC), One River School (NJ), Finlandia University (MI), Sierra Nevada College (NV), Pamela Salisbury Gallery, and John Davis Gallery (NY), as well as at BozoMag, New Image Art, and TSA in Los Angeles. She has exhibited widely in group exhibitions across the U.S., Europe, and Taiwan.
Artist Statement
My hand-tufted textiles are an attempt to slow time, to anchor myself in an era of relentless momentum. Each stitch holds a moment in place; each tapestry becomes a tactile record of my days. The repetition and rhythm of making create a necessary retreat—a space where time opens for daydreaming and looking closely.
I think of yarn as a rolled-up line-- a drawing that becomes soft, dimensional, and painterly. Faces emerge from dense accumulations of objects, symbols, plants, and landscapes from my memory The resulting image is both recognizable and impossible to fully decipher.
I am interested in the tension between the individual and the world around them: what makes us distinct, and what stories and associations are universal.
Beneath their playful surfaces, these portraits hold a more complicated gaze. They imagine women as self-defined, interconnected, and deeply embedded in the world they inhabit, while still carrying an awareness of the instability of the present. The faces become containers for both possibility and unease—whole worlds assembled from the things we inherit, experience, desire, and hope to change.
Meet Liv Aanrud
