Ana Sant’Anna works with painting, photography, and drawing, addressing themes related to transience, non-chronological time, and luminosity. The artist explores the interstices between the visible and that which is interiorized through human experience. In constant movement, Sant’Anna absorbs landscapes and gathers stones, glass, and organic elements that inhabit her images, filled with chromatic transitions and flashes of light. Representations of horizons, shorelines, and mountains give shape to her existential reflections and restlessness. For the artist, painting functions as an “active meditation,” a tool for self-inquiry capable of opening up a space of silence, balance, and rest — both for her and for those who come into contact with her work.

Her artistic production began with photography, in 2011, while still studying Museology at UFBA, in Salvador, Bahia. Between 2017 and 2020, she lived in São Paulo, where she completed a master’s degree in Creative Processes at PUC-SP. With the pandemic, she returned to Salvador, a city that, being better suited to her sensibility, catalyzed her production. The artist introduced painting into her practice upon realizing that the visual conceptualization she was building demanded other means of expression. She first experimented with oil pastel on paper; at another point she added oil stick, testing the interaction between the two materials and the use of her fingers, developing a personal technique in the process. In 2023, the artist undertook an artist residency in Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, which brought mountains into her landscape repertoire.

Before the canvas or paper, Sant’Anna draws on memories and reminiscences. Thin layers of oil paint, diluted in solvent, dissolve the brushstroke and create a misty atmosphere. Her works aim to convey states of suspension, which over the course of her research migrated from photography into drawing and painting. Blue tones dominate one period of her production, in which shorelines, glaciers, and other landscapes reveal an investigative eye seeking to transcend the timescale of human life. A striking experience during a residency in the Amazon — the discomfort caused by the absence of a horizon amid the density of the forest — reinforced the image of the sea as an icon of infinitude, expansiveness, and the possibility of the self’s integration with the whole.

She received the Branco de Melo Award (2022) from the Fundação Cultural do Pará, Brazil, and the Encouragement Award at the 19th Salão Ubatuba de Artes Visuais, Brazil (2023). She was artist-in-residence at the Instituto Sacatar, Itaparica, Brazil, the Labverde program, Manaus, Brazil, and Mirante Xique-Xique, Igatu, Brazil. She held the solo exhibition Maré, ArteFASAM, São Paulo, Brazil (2023) and participated in group exhibitions, notably Céu da pedra, Claraboia, São Paulo, Brazil (2026); Telúricos, Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil (2026); Construção, vento e entremarés, held respectively at Claraboia, São Paulo, and Flexa Galeria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2025). Her works are part of Brazilian institutional collections of the Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto (MARP); the Fundação Cultural do Estado do Pará, Belém; and the Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro (MAR).