Anya Keyes is a Portland-based artist whose journey from Soviet-era Ukraine to the United States at age sixteen has guided her artistic vision. After earning a Doctor of Pharmacy degree, Keyes had a career in medicine before her passion for painting ultimately prevailed. In 2017, a move to the West Coast rekindled her creative aspirations, and she began her new life as an artist.
Over the years her work blending Ukrainian folklore with modern American imagery has steadily gained recognition. Keyes’s artwork has been acquired by private collectors at exhibitions including the Seattle Art Fair and the Sitka Art Invitational, and her work is included in the City of Portland’s public art collection.
Working from her Northeast Portland studio, Keyes continues to produce work that channels her cultural heritage, personal journey, and evolving sense of identity within the contemporary American art landscape.
Photo by Jay Fram
Bio
My paintings draw on experience as a first-generation immigrant, a foreign-born mother, friend, and citizen. A woman seemingly integrated into modern American life, yet who occasionally slips into her rural Slavic upbringing. When you move to a new land at 16, you’re given a life sentence of “Am I a misfit or am I just a foreigner?”
The figures in my portraits are not mirror images, but rather vessels of introspection. They embody the myriad versions of myself. Each brushstroke questions the path not taken. Would the essence of my being remain unchanged had I never left Ukraine? Have I become the person I was destined to be?
These paintings serve as windows into the kaleidoscope of my identity, offering fleeting glimpses of a self in constant flux. The abstract passages, in particular, invite viewers to embark on their own journey of self-exploration. In the end, these timescapes are not just about me, but about the universal struggle to reconcile the many facets of our ever-evolving selves.
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