Spectral Interference

Spectral Interference is a solo exhibition by London-based painter Anna Liber Lewis, presented with Hannah Payne Art. Bringing together a new body of work, it marks a rupture from her earlier grid-based paintings, embracing abstraction as a site of risk, embodiment, and perceptual instability. Across paintings of varying scale, Liber Lewis leaves behind the grid and earlier line work. Structure remains, not as a fixed system, but as a generative structure that can be disrupted, softened, or pushed to breaking point. The surfaces evolve through cycles of editing and return: worked into, scraped back, reactivated, and at times deliberately destabilised. Old works are revisited and altered, reflecting a willingness to give up control in pursuit of something more alive. Central to this body of work is an interest in high-stakes painting and the tension between abstraction and figuration, structure and the body, control and risk. Influenced by artists including Helen Frankenthaler and Carroll Dunham, Liber Lewis approaches abstraction as a physical, confronting act, where the mark carries memory, effort, and jeopardy. Gesture operates as a record of decision-making, endurance, and doubt. The exhibition brings together significant new and recent works, including Embodied Other , My GRB Afterglow , and Very Rare Picture of Earth II , alongside large-scale canvases shown publicly for the first time. It represents her most ambitious institutional presentation to date, following her inclusion in Unreal City: Abstract Painting at Saatchi Gallery in 2024.