Anya Roberts-Toney
November 25, 2019
Anya Roberts-Toney is a painter of still lives, apparitions, feminine mystique, and cultural contradictions. Her work resists easy classification. Often she balances beauty and ugliness— sleek, sinuous lines paired with grotesque colors; a pretty face with sickly yellowed eyes. "For the last six years I've been thinking a lot about femininity," she said in an interview earlier this year. ". . . thinking about the female body and this cultural ambivalence where there's this severe desire for the female body but at the same time this fear and distrust of the female body."
Black Bouquet, oil on canvas, 2018
Soft Curses, oil on canvas, 2018
Soft Curses (2018) is a tough read— a hazy, dark, foreboding composition of soft-edged sunny yellows, faded coral, and low-keyed lilac, all surrounded by dark sienna and black. There are burning taper candles in the center around (and over) which Roberts-Toney has painted an oval— a gilded mirror? A flower wreath? Some ritually conjured image from the other side? "My real interest as a painter is to paint the idea of objects or things that don't exist or can't exist," she says.
She is (Gazelle and Doe), oil on linen, 2018
Prayer for Large Breasts, oil on canvas, 2018
In Prayer for Large Breasts (2018) we see two hands, fingers elongated as if to gently apply pressure, not unlike hands performing a breast exam. The mottled fuchsia form touched by those hands could just as easily be a vase of flowers as a visualization of breast tissue— perhaps in the painting it is both. This perspective speaks to the potential of breast exams as a prayer ritual, or the larger late-aughts phenomenon of spiritualizing self care routines.
Safe Keeping, Oil, collage, false eyelashes and rhinestones on linen, 2018
Wallflower 2, oil on canvas, 2016
Vogue, oil on canvas, 2016
Vogue (2016) shows a bright blue background flanked by hot orange roses and canary yellow lettering showing just enough text to infer the word "vogue." The hard edged text contrasts sharply to the loosely painted flowers, which contrast still to the unfinished gestural, drippy negative space toward the bottom. The word vogue, French for 'style,' is lifted here from the long-running American fashion magazine. It is a gorgeous and bittersweet reminder that beauty fades and fashions change. Roses bloom. Roses wilt.
Decadence III, oil on canvas, 2017
Roberts-Toney’s latest solo show, The Queen of Hearts, is up now at Lodge Gallery, an exhibition space in the lobby of Allied Works Architecture. To see the show, stop by during business hours and buzz the receptionist for entry. Anya is busy in the studio working towards a new series of paintings featuring full scale figures. Follow along on Instagram to see what’s next! @anyajrt
