An Interview with Anikó Boda: Visual Artist & Best International Artist 2024 of the VAA’s Artist of the Year Awards
Anikó Boda – Artist Feature – VAA Member of the Month April 2025
Anikó Boda comes from a medical background working as an obstetrician and gynaecologist until the age of 30. After her daughters were born, Anikó discussed the situation with her husband to finally turn her passion for art into a serious career.
To learn more about her work: head to her website: https://www.anikoboda.com or follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anikobodastudio
A typical day for Anikó includes here daily routines of workouts and chores (mainly, household and family duties) in the morning. The administrative tasks are always next, including emails, applications and social media and only once everything in her home life has been organized, she likes to start painting and gets into her creative mindset.
Heading to the artist’s studio complex, where she rents the studio, by mid-afternoon there is normally always someone around to discuss the events of the art world and of course, for occasional gossip. Painting just feels like pure joy once all the tasks of ‘work’ are completed. Following a full day of painting, Anikó heads home for that quality time with her husband and two daughters.
Much of Anikó’s work centers around human experiences, suffering and joy. Often, she finds herself creating a kind of visual medical dictionary. Throughout her works, she answers questions such as ‘How do you choose your fate?, ‘What is life going to be like in the posthuman era?’ and ‘How does one remember their childhood?’
“I’m really happy with my first life as a physician, because the experience deeply formulated my outlook on life in general”
Life is like a firework of ideas, I collect them all day, every day – even in my sleep. My process is an intuitive one, rather than thoroughly thought out. I’ll collect visual and theoretical ‘seeds’ in my memory, then pair them – which idea or philosophical problem matches what visual clues?
I’ll always take a step back and wait (working on other projects in the meantime) – sometimes for days, weeks or even years before I start to plan visually. I call this my ‘natural selection phase’. As I start to plan – I make sketches – pencil or small oils, I find this phase very creative. I know what I want, but I have not yet determined the scale or exact content. My work often overextends, sometimes I find myself glueing more pieces of paper or canvas’ to the side of my initial sketches. After the past phase is complete, I project the final sketch onto a large canvas and start from the upper left-hand corner and with the background, working my way through the middle to the foreground. Occasionally I will change my mind during the painting process, either changing or adding minor things. Once it is finished, I date it so I know when it can be varnished. After I have started a new painting, this is when I realise, I forgot to sign the finished piece!
Having started my art career later in life and my medical background, I go by the following philosophy:
“Do not procrastinate. Always work on your masterpiece, the most difficult, complicated and intricate artwork you are capable of. It could be your last one, you can die any time. You may be remembered for the artwork that you are working on right now. Work now, you could lose all that force tomorrow!”
What is your creative process? What outlook guides you?
What is your definition of Artistic Success?
I often describe artistic success as a table standing on three legs!
- You are the most successful artist, if you know your ‘why’ and your ‘what’ – in simpler terms, can you deliver your message to your audience clearly and in a high quality. For me, this is the baseline.
- You can accomplish all this in a way that does not harm your health, body or mind – you do not want to shorten the lifetime that you can spend with creation!
- You are financially supported enough – not to accumulate wealth, but by being able to have all the tools and materials you need to create high quality, long-lasting artworks.
To me, nothing else matters. Validation, fame, and recognition from other people today are useful in the professional career, but this is subjective and can disappear all too quickly.
‘Do everything you can to promote your artwork, but do not sacrifice your health in the long term, tired people do lesser work!’
What are some of the accomplishments you are most proud of over the last 12 months?
Over the past 12 months, I have had many exhibitions including:
– ’Junge Wilde – Wilde Junge’ group show in Rosenhang Museum of Modern Art with Marcus Lüpertz and Elvira Bach (Weilburg, Germany)
– ’Celebration’ group show at Lena Roselli Gallery (Budapest, Hungary)
– Modern Contemporary Art Institute Arte Laguna Art Prize finalist exhibition (Venice, Italy)
– ’Year of Turkish – Hungarian Friendship’ group exhibition in the Hungarian Kunsthalle (Budapest, Hungary)
– ’Surreal Urbanities: Reimagined Realities’ group show with BBA Gallery (Berlin, Germany)
– ’The Twelve’ Art Biennale with David Gallery (Budapest, Hungary)
– BBA Art Prize finalist show in the Kühlhause Berlin (Berlin, Germany)
– Tafelberg Gallery solo show with Galerie ArtAffair (Nürnberg, Germany)
– ’Young artists of the gallery’ group show with Galerie ArtAffair (Regensburg, Germany)
– Karlsruhe Artfair with Galerie ArtAffair (Germany)
In the summer of 2024, I was a finalist for the BBA Art Prize in Berlin and has two group shows with gallery. Also in 2024, I won Best International Artist in the VAA Artist of the Year Awards. I’m honored to support the work of the VAA, having taken part in online events such as the ‘Gallery Representation and Working with Art Managers’ course and being a member of the selection committee for the 2025 Scholarship Art Prize.
In my career, I am proud of the development of my visualization skills and the way my constant curiosity and practice led me to the complicated pictures I do today. The freedom of being able to paint anything I can think of. The liberty of thinking and creating I have gained over the year is my biggest treasure and the base of my confidence as an artist. Whilst the prizes, exhibitions and artists are important in my professional life, they are secondary consequences.
I am still in the learning process with many phases of being an artist, such as how to work with galleries or how many paintings I can make in a year. Really it comes down to fine-tuning my routine so that I can produce more works without going crazy – a key area for development is efficiency.
Another obstacle is social media, I lack the patience to understand how it really works. I never want to post something for the sake of it, I do not enjoy creating content just to amass thousands of followers, instead I think it should be used to discover like-minded artist friends.
I have two pieces of advice that stick in my mind.
One: If you have the opportunity, go everywhere in person! It can make such difference, I believe in building mutual trust in real life, opposed to social media. It Is much easier to make friends with art world professionals and other others when you are working together in person, plus you will never know what could happen and who you could meet!
The other piece of advice always helps me to relax, when I stress myself over something, I think – if you conscientiously beat the hot iron, it must take form.
What are the biggest obstacles you’ve faced when improving your arts profession? What is one piece of advice that has helped you the most?
What Career Goal is your current priority? How has the VAA helped your journey so far?
I am working on expanding my comfort zone and working on larger and larger paintings, I’ve started working on a 3x5m piece. I suffer from heights so working with such large pieces is going to be a real challenge. Alongside my creative goals, I would like to show more of my work in museums and public collections, so I can communicate more with my audience. An ongoing goal is to learn and study like-minded artists!
I am a big believer in lifelong learning, so the VAA is the perfect place for this through events and online reading materials. Having entered both the VAA International Exhibition and Scholarship Prize in 2023 and the Artist of the Year Awards in 2024, winning Best International Artist in the latter, the VAA has helped me exhibit in London.
The mentorship program that was also part of the prize has proved very useful. I’ll always be grateful to VAA Founders and Directors, Shirley-Ann O’Neill and Laura O’Hare for including my story in their book ‘Securing Representation: Galleries, Agents and Artists’. Having become a member of the VAA Selection Committee for 2025, I feel like a bit of an ‘insider’, and this is a big step in my career. Hopefully we can continue to work together in the future, and I can help other artists reach their dreams.
Is there anything you would like to say to the artist that you were a year ago?
Make every decision with your longest-term goal in mind. Do not be greedy, if short-term advantages contradict your long-term purpose, do not be afraid of losing those advantages.