Anthea Epelle Nigeria, b. 1972
Anthea Epelle is a Lagos-based visual artist whose practice explores themes of femininity, introspection, and emotional experience through a language of abstraction.
Her compositions are grounded in an intuitive engagement with color, texture, and form, often unfolding through layered processes that emphasize both construction and erasure.
With a background in fashion, Epelle’s sensitivity to fabric, pattern, and surface is evident in her work. She approaches painting as a process of arrangement, where color relationships, repetition, and material buildup create rhythmic compositions. Her work suggests psychological and emotional states, using abstraction to explore vulnerability, identity, and self-perception.
Deconstruct 3 (2026) forms part of Epelle’s ongoing Deconstruct series, in which the artist engages in a process of breaking down and reassembling layers of color and form. Built through successive applications of paint, the composition is structured by repeated vertical marks that create a grid-like rhythm across the surface, intersected by horizontal bands of saturated color. The work reflects Epelle’s interest in process as a means of discovery. Layers are applied, disrupted, and reorganized, producing a surface that oscillates between control and spontaneity. Variations in tone, density, and texture evoke the qualities of woven or patterned fabric.
