Anya is concerned with painting as both a form of image making and as object. Drawing on an ever-building lexicon of abstract marks, her work stems from found images and personal experiences, all the time attempting to conjure universal qualities through references to the everyday. Found images are worked over or cut up, their function shifted, and discarded elements are celebrated in paint. Personal experience serves as an editing tool, dictating decisions in the work about colour, form and scale. It selects relevant features from the found material.

Her work constantly evolves through an experimental process with materials and the canvas. New forms respond to previous layers, playful compositions confuse foreground and background.

An ongoing series of ‘Pot Plant’ paintings aims to explore the construction of identity through décor and refers to domestic ritual. The pair paintings ‘Swallow I & II’ (2015) are based on found medical illustrations, which are imbued with a sense of body through abstraction and paint.