About

  • A life made from stardust just like you who decided I really like making shapes and colours.

  • When the brain gets too loud and I feel the tugging in me to re-arrange my furniture, creating can become an anchor in the storm, an outlet.

    Other times, when it is peaceful and the world seems gentle and soft, I am inspired by its warmth.

    I think it is proof of life, to create is to say I am still alive - in all things from children making mud-pies to birds building nests. To create is to keep going, to feel.

  • For me mediums are the bridge between my mind and the physical manifestation of my ideas and thoughts. Sometimes oil paint will best translate the inspiration, other times some good scratchy pencils and a rubber.

    My most common mediums are oil paint, acrylic paint, watercolour and pencil as well as many forms of printmaking - such as etching, relief woodcut and lino cuts, lithography, and screen-printing.

    Best advice I can give is to not take yourself too seriously and if you want to dip your toes into something new, then by all means take the leap of faith - you are never done learning (and I’m not just talking about art anymore).

  • I do not use and have never used any AI generated content in my works. All work presented was created by my own two hands, born of blood, sweat, and many tears.

    I retain my right to ownership and copyright of all my works as creator, and do not allow any persons/companies/entities to use my art without consent or to train AI.

  • A hammock

Artist Statement

Hello there, my name is Anya Mitchell, an artist born in Worcestershire, and currently studying a BA in Fine Art. I am an interdisciplinary artist who’s love of art stemmed from painting, especially buttery smooth oils, but since starting my degree I have also discovered the wonderful and playful worlds of illustration and printmaking, specifically etching and lithography. I enjoy delving into the topics of identity and subconscious psychology through portraiture and experimenting with colour theory and the physics of colour perception. I also have become bewitched by plein air painting landscapes, to which I first started to develop my own observational painting and has now become a fun past time to slow down and appreciate the natural beauty in things that do not ask for attention.

I am the Bursary Student Representative on the committee of The Broadway Arts Festival; a charity based in the town of Broadway, Worcestershire, which supports local and national artists through its yearly festival, a bursary scheme for local students taking the arts at higher education, and school outreach programme. It is this same town that in the late 1800’s an artist colony including the names of Francis Millet and John Singer Sargent was based, to which launched my passion for portraiture and plein air due to growing up nearby.

I want my art to make the viewer stop and look back a little longer, and perhaps even ponder themselves and their perceptions of the world. I believe art is a fundamental pillar of humanity and helps us explore the things that maybe cannot quite be defined. Deconstructing complex and ever-shifting feelings, concepts, and sights – art has been a medium for humans to visually communicate for as long as we have been around, both helping us learn about the past but also understand our present and ourselves. My practise helps me slow down and be in the moment in a world that praises over-working and ‘instantivity’, often completely missing whole worlds of wonders simply because they did not stop. My goal for my art is to not only help me but also help others remember to slow down and look, beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all.

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