Anya’s work is all about layers.
“Creating Fiber collage prayer/meditation flags originated as a Love response born out of chaos. The process of creating takes me deep beneath layers of the human condition in search of what glows at the very center. Art is a meditation practice that strengthens my ability to Love and Trust while immersed in the unknowing.”
“From a posture of listening, recycled fabric and fibers are layered into expressive images. Details are stitched in as I move the flag around, essentially “painting with thread.” Depths of color and form reveal that beauty glows through from beneath the surface.”
In art as in life.
From a similar meditative posture, I also make wearable art and acrylic paintings using a glazing technique.”
Biography
Anya Doll did not go to art school. As a result, her approach to art has been circuitous; but it has been continuous and unique. The middle child of seven born to an artist and a banker, her role was to receive information from multiple, sometimes discordant perspectives. The theme followed her in college where she earned a dual BA in Theology and Elementary Education. This posture in life has served well to open her to beauty in complexity, the sacred gold at the heart of even the most egregious circumstances. Through years of creating art, she has learned to synthesize.
It was her husband’s mental illness that led her to fiber collage as a medium. Before that she had been a painter and designer who only dabbled in fiber. Faced with the uncertainty of psychotic episodes, Anya needed to learn to listen to the silence beneath her fears, her thoughts, even beneath what was happening right in front of her. It was in that silence that creating fiber collage prayer flags was born.
Each flag is created in complete silence so her ego does not get involved, so she can listen for what needs to happen next, not what she thinks or wants to happen next. Anya listens to the unknowing.
“We humans fight the unknowing. We cover it with a lot of noise. These flags express the beauty that resides so deep in us that even our knowing can be superfluous.”
Anya’s work was represented in 2021 at the reopening of a wing at the Denver Art Museum. She has been in shows in galleries. Some have been solo shows, some with other artists. Her works are in several states in the United States. A few hang in offices and hospitals, most are in homes.