Via Boley

Austin-based painter Via Boley (b. 1999) explores reflection, perception, and the tension between seeing and being seen. Combining modern reflective materials, metal leaf, with traditional painting techniques, she manipulates surface and light to blur the boundaries between subject and observer, emotion and image.

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Figures and objects in Boley’s work often appear fractured, displaced, or abstracted, caught between visibility and distortion. Her layered, sometimes torched, cut, distressed compositions invite viewers to confront their own presence within the work, transforming reflection into a psychological and emotional encounter. A beautiful moodiness transcends.

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Boley holds a BFA in Painting from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2021) and has exhibited in Boston and Austin. She earned recognition including the Frick Arts Foundation Award (2025), the Gamblin Paint Award, the Roger Tibbetts Art Award, and the Artist & Craftsman Award. She completed a residency at Cow House Studios in Ireland (2023) and currently works from her studio at Splinter Group Studios in Austin, TX.

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Artist Statement

"At its core, my practice explores the dynamic between viewer and subject, and the complicated relationship between reflection and identity. I’m interested in how surfaces—particularly reflective ones—can hold emotion, distortion, and memory all at once.

By combining abstraction and figuration, I create spaces where figures and objects seem caught between visibility and disappearance. I manipulate surfaces until they echo both vulnerability and resistance. In these works, viewers inevitably find traces of themselves—folded into the same shifting, emotional terrain that defines my own process of looking."