OCA Student Stories: Anna Pike

Stage 3 BA (Hons) Painting student Anna Pike is currently preparing to exhibit at St. Peter’s Church, Wolfhamcote, near Rugby, Warwickshire on May 2nd – 4th 2026.

Here, Painting Programme Leader Emma Drye joins her in conversation to find out more about her work and plans.

ED: The last time I engaged with your work you were interrogating the relevance for you of experiences or bodies in states of transit or liminality. This presented as a kind of bifurcation; a phenomenological exploration of a state of being through abstraction, and a very materials led and observed form of attention to the transition from life to death in the other than human. Is that still true today and have you come to any further accommodations of those two forms of practice?

AP:  That is still true, although there is some convergence evident in my recent work as more biological forms appear in the abstract. My observed paintings are, amongst other things, a form of documentation and serve as both an anchor and a spring board for the rest of my practice. The links between the abstract and the representational sit with the cognitive dissonance experienced by a viewer in both cases. I am particularly interested in the philosophy of existing in a liminal state: the idea that endless possibilities can arise from these thresholds. To me, this mirrors my current journey as an artist and I am interested in putting the viewer in a similar space.  I don’t start an abstract painting with any goal in mind or any reference idea, I literally just put on whatever paint I have to hand, which is usually the leftover palette from a painting of an observed form. The canvas itself then becomes a generative space, in which I try very hard to work from the sub-conscious, in as far as that is possible. I am always amazed at what does appear, especially as I have never really sought to be a painter of the abstract! 

ED: Grief or bereavement, loss of many kinds in fact, can have a sort of gestalt style immersiveness that takes one out of linear time and into a kind of liminal space where relations are experienced so differently. Perhaps I am moving in the wrong direction here but transitions such as those you refer to are often afforded space socially and emotionally through ritual. I feel as if the detailed painting on wood contrasting with the ethereal and luminous abstracts, and indeed your curatorial choices, speak to something of the sense of pace associated with ritual and healing?

AP: Rituals certainly, yes. Curatorially there is movement from an obvious event through to a more psychological space of change and readjustment that we associate with the performance of rituals. Whether this would be considered a reflection of the process of healing, however, depends on the viewer’s experiences. I’m often asked if my paintings are about loss and grief. To me they are not, rather they are exploring life in all its randomness and chaos. The birds are interesting to me from both a scientific and an artistic point of view. As a biologist, these are intense encounters, revealing exquisitely beautiful forms that are hard to observe close-up during life. Their decay is not a tragedy but a transition state of matter, a biological necessity of nutrient recycling into different forms.  As an artist, however, I am choosing to ‘still’ that process, capturing them at the point of transition, revealing something of both their fragility and their vulnerability. They are teetering on the point of disintegration. It is in my abstract works that I allow the ‘decay’ to happen. There is a collapse of form, space loses its meaning and time unravels. I think of these as ‘Emerging Narratives’ where new forms, thoughts and stories begin to emerge and where meaning is generated in the encounter between the viewer and work. The juxtaposition of the grounded realistic and the ethereal abstract can speak of the, as you say, gestalt-style immersiveness we inhabit during the process of healing from loss, but equally this idea of constant reassembling, giving rise to unexpected futures and alternative pathways could apply to other processes of renewal and transformation.

ED: That is a lovely idea, the stilling of entropy. Or even perhaps the temporary / momentary separation of the impact of entropy from the point of its beginning through the bifurcation of painterly approach. How does the space you are exhibiting the work in contribute to the whole?

AP: I’m exhibiting in an old medieval church that is the only surviving building of a village that was abandoned sometime around the 1500’s, probably due to enclosure of the land. It is now owned by the Churches Conservation Trust, and whilst it has been preserved from dereliction, it is not a particularly glamorous space. It’s a bit grubby, there is no electricity and it is a little remote. Not qualities that you would normally associate with an art exhibition. However, as you enter, alongside that sense of reverence that old churches tend to instill, there is also a strong sense of that ‘stilling of entropy’ you refer to. The building may have lasted for centuries but it exists on the very edge of its own journey into demise. In fact the Trust’s brochure for the church describes it as the ‘church that refused to die’! That felt very authentic for my work. When choosing an exhibition space I found many traditional gallery spaces to be quite clinical, with bright lights and clean bright white walls, or were sited in busy places situated within another commercial space. Whilst these spaces have their own rewards, they didn’t quite sit right with this body of work. I wanted somewhere that would allow viewers to feel immersed in a contemplative, transitional space, where their own stories could emerge from the works. I’m prepared to overcome the difficulties of using this as a venue in order to achieve this. The exhibition will become part of the building’s historical journey too, and I like that. 

ED: Thank you so much Anna, it’s been really interesting to hear more about your work and best of luck with the upcoming exhibition and artists talk.

AP: Thank you, it’s been a pleasure.