Anna Ilsley

Anna Ilsley is a painter based in Suffolk, who works from Asylum Studios in Rendlesham.

Her paintings - secretly freighted with art-historical referenes to femininity and motherhood - confront the sociology and politics of the female body head-on. Vivid and fleshy, her figures push at the limits of the canvas, asserting presence, desire and power. Drawing on ancient myth, on medieval and renaissance art, and on contemporary experience, Ilsley's work interrogates the ways in which women's bodies are controlled, revered and feared. Her paintings reframe female bodies as sites of agency and excess, and challenge the historical and cultural narratives that seek to contain them.

She studied at Norwich School of Art, took a BA in Fine Art Painting at the University of Brighton, and completed the Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing School. She is an Artist Associate of the British School at Athens.