Anya McManis came to painting through her work as a graphic designer. Her strong sense of layout and color provided a natural transition to fine art. In painting she found a medium that was free from the restraints of commercial design and allowed for a stronger artistic expression of her ideas. 

Her work is an intuitive process and rather than painting what she sees, she paints what she feels and translates her emotions into visual concepts on the canvas. Her paintings have a visceral and primal identity that mirrors her desire for unrestrained creative interpretation of feelings and ideas. She likes the contrast of bold colors and often incorporates handmade paper, metal, gold leaf and other media into her paintings.

In the past years her art was on display at various galleries and venues in Denver. Recently, Anya was invited to show her art at the 2011 Florence Biennale, an international contemporary art fair held every two years in the historical Fortezza da Basso in Florence, Italy.

A German native, Anya has lived in the US for 16 years and found a second home in Colorado. She received her translator certification for English and French from the Euro Language Institute in Germany and holds a BA in Communication from The Women’s College of the University of Denver. She owns and runs Kreative Keystrokes, a graphic design and web development agency in Denver. Her business was recently chosen as a winner of the “Make Mine a Million $ Business” competition, a national initiative of Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence and American Express OPEN designed to help women entrepreneurs strengthen their vision, build their strategy and take their business to a million dollars in revenue.