“Central to my work is a desire to seek out truths, engage mysteries and document stories found. I work intuitively, allowing my materials to take the lead. Frequently, I feel that my work is spoken through me as much as from me. There is a sense of following the intangible - and urgency.”    

Born just outside of Philadelphia, Manya’s early identification as a creative led her to undergraduate studies at the University of the Arts (Philadelphia College of Art) and graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Painting. Her work is characterized by strong gestural animation and the sense of events unfolding.   Existing somewhere between representational and non-representational abstraction, organic shapes shift under the eye and beings are revealed and obscured: their presences heavy but purposefully undefined in the worlds they inhabit.  

Early in her career, Manya spent several extended periods of time working independently in Italy. The time spent studying many great works around her solidified her love of the figure, light and transcendent narratives. Following her love of movement, she also worked as a fitness professional and coach, retiring in recent years to dedicate more of her time to art.  Manya’s knowledge and unusual experience in this realm is palpable in her works and she credits it as a natural and necessary extension to her artistic meditations on anatomy and movement. While generally expressionistic in nature, Manya’s work lives outside of the confines of any particular movement or time period.

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