About
My mixed media paintings and drawings on paper mache and carved panels range from large-scale wall installations and freestanding sculptures to small and intimate objects, with an obsessive attention to detail on every scale.
The work draws on archetypal imagery, and reinterpretations of biblical and mythological narratives, to explore the various iterations of the body as vessel, frame, and surface. The vessel is a volume that can hold inner contents such as ideas and feelings, and in a more literal sense nurtures life in motherhood - expanding, contracting, and shapeshifting to fit these contents. The frame surrounds and supports an inner core and separates it from the external world through the interplay between its physicality and the image within – referring to both a guardian and a persona, and evoking the ways in which we seek to protect the body and spirit. The surface is a skin which is sensual by nature, and I approach it with a focus on the topography of its undulating forms. I am interested in narrowing the separation between frame, image and object, and often incorporating an inner space locked within the piece, something inaccessible - a secret.
The work pursues a sense of intentional agreement between our self-reflective, transcendence-seeking self, and the worldly fullness, limitation, and physicality of being - as sought by Eve when she left the Garden of Eden to seek earthly life.
Bio
Anya Kotler was born in Ukraine, grew up in Moldova and Israel and studied painting at the New York Academy of Art. Most recently her work was included in exhibitions at the Susquehanna Art Museum (PA), Buckham Gallery (MI), Warnes Contemporary (NYC), Woman Made Gallery (IL), and Pen and Brush Gallery (NYC). Anya's work was featured/reviewed in Art Spiel, New American Paintings, New Haven Independent, and Friend of the Artist. She is a recipient of the NJ State Council on the Arts Fellowship, and twice the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant. Anya has taught courses and workshops around the US and in Ireland, and lives with her husband and three-year-old daughter in Summit, NJ.