The Spaces In Between: Anita Roye’s Liminal Spaces
The Spaces In Between: Anita Roye’s Liminal Spaces.
There are places we pass through without noticing. Corridors, stairwells, windows. Architectural thresholds that hold no destination, only transition. For Birmingham-based artist and art psychotherapist Anita Roye, these spaces are not empty. They are charged. They are where change begins.
Her latest collection is a meditation on liminal space, the quiet in-betweens where emotion, memory, and transformation converge. The word “liminal” comes from the Latin limen, meaning threshold. It describes a space that occupies both sides of a boundary, often evoking uncertainty, ambiguity, and the discomfort of transition.
“Stairwells, roads, windows and corridors can be unsettling and devoid of people… a journey into the unknown.”
Inspired by her visits to our new gallery in Digbeth whilst building it, Anita’s work captures the overlooked textures of movement and pause. Her first visit was quiet, observational. She photographed the corridors and stairwells, drawn to their stillness. Her second visit was electric, “The gallery had now transformed into what felt like a bigger space but with small in-between spaces… every turn felt like a new discovery.”
Anita’s practice is rooted in emotional truth. Her canvases are textured, spontaneous, and deeply personal, metaphors for destruction, repair, and self-discovery. Paint becomes metaphorical skin. The surface holds stories of grief, resilience, and the quiet reckoning of age. Her dual role as artist and art psychotherapist brings a depth that’s felt in every mark. “In therapy… it is the in-between spaces, the spaces without words where change really occurs.”
Rather than smoothing over the chaos, Anita strips back. She begins with energetic gestures, then waits. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for months. The second stage is where the magic happens, not in the addition, but in the elimination. “Rather than smoothing over the marks,” she writes, “I eliminate the unnecessary, allowing the necessary to speak.”
Her influences are felt but never imitated. Rothko’s blurred edges. The legacy of women abstract painters, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell. Anita honours their resilience while forging her own path, one that refuses to take anything for granted. Her work is shaped by lived experience, by the emotional residue of childhood, by the invisible labour of healing.
This collection is not just a series of paintings. It’s an invitation. To pause. To reflect. To step into the spaces that shape us. It asks you to feel, to remember, and to cross the threshold into something deeper. “These quiet spaces lay undiscovered until you entered and explore.”
We’re honoured to have Anita’s work in our new home. Her art doesn’t whisper, it resonates.
These works aren’t just here to be looked at. They’re here to be lived with.
If a piece speaks to you, take it home. Take the quiet reckoning, the textured memory, the emotional threshold. Anita’s paintings are portals, and they belong in spaces where transformation is welcome.
