Latest Shape collaboration: Anita was a featured artist at our 2020 Tate Exchange. The inaugural Emergence bursary artists, Letty McHugh, Lauren Saunders, and Fae Kilburn, invited Anita to participate in the event - co-produced by Disability Arts Online - as an emerging artist whose work they support.

Artist Statement: Anita Roye is currently based in Birmingham and studying for an MA in Art Therapy. Interested in the therapeutic value of art, she encourages play and experimentation through play in her practice.

Anita’s work is rooted in the English tradition of travelling, observing and working directly from the landscape. Where she immerses herself in the sights and sounds, as well as capturing an emotional response that is felt then depicted within the layers of the canvas, creating a skin like surface. These large works are finished in her studio, using oil paints on top of the first acrylic layer.

As an abstract artist Anita aims to tease out the inner landscape of the self through her practice, revealing the “inner self.” Connecting her studies and painting, Anita now works with small groups in the community, encouraging others to express their inner states creatively.

Anita is interested in mental health and wants to bring attention to being invisibly disabled. Her 2020 workshop encourages participants to use fluorescent paint to create layers, using a variety of sensory mark making tools. These layers will be obvious to the naked eye. The viewer will be encouraged to use a UV torch to make the unseen layers visible. As Anita puts it: this revelation operates as a metaphor for bringing unseen disabilities - that aren’t always obvious and consequently can result in isolation and exclusion - into view.

Image: Anita Roye 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

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Banner Image: Anita Roye 2020. Courtesy of the artist. Description: Marks of red, black and white are made in paint and pastel across a blue background.