Annie Whitley was born in 1989 in Virginia Beach, Virginia. She is a married mother of three, proudly of mixed-racial heritage, and in recovery since 2017. She is a Tattoo Artist at Cleveland Street Tattoo and has a private art studio at her home in Portsmouth, Virginia. Whitley graduated from Thomas Nelson Community College in 2022 with an Associate degree in Visual Arts; In 2024, she received her Bachelor of Arts in Studio Art, with a 2D/3D concentration with a double major in Art History.

Strangebird’s artwork is inspired by Expressionists such as Käthe Kollwitz and Edvard Munch and the female artists of Postrevolutionary Mexico. Her authorship is inspired by those same sources as well as writers Mary Garrard, Dina Mirkin, and feminist art history scholars.

Her artwork centers around contemporary social inequities and injustices and overlaps with themes of motherhood, love, and loss. Through scholarship and art, she seeks to bring clarity to the past and awareness to contemporary human rights issues. Whitley believes the best way to build these connections is to foster connection through similarities rather than emphasizing differences.