Vanessa Mitter

Flowers for Anna Akhmatova – You Will Hear Thunder

Vanessa Mitter is a painter, who lives and works in London. She graduated with a BA in Fine Art: Painting from Central Saint Martins, and a Postgraduate Diploma and MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts. Mitter has exhibited extensively. Current and recent selected exhibitions include: Cross Currents, a painting exhibition across two galleries in New York, Rosebud Contemporary and Makowski Gallery, An Exhibition of Small Things with Big Ideas, curated by Paul Carey-Kent – White Conduit Projects, London and Cathedral Hilbertraum, Berlin. Mitter’s work is held in private collections in the USA and Europe, and in public collections, including The Mark Rothko Art Centre, Latvia. Mitter has been shortlisted and longlisted for many art prizes, including the Women in Art Prize 2026, Waverton Art Prize, Jackson’s Art Prize, Mother Art Prize, 100 Painters of Tomorrow (Beers Gallery) and the Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Prize. In this latest body of work, Mitter has been making a series of paintings. This is ongoing and started approximately two years ago. All of these paintings are in the still-life genre, deliberately referring to flowers as both ephemeral in their transient beauty, and also, as ritual offerings to deceased female artists, writers and musicians. Anna Akhmatova is one of Russia’s most celebrated poets. ‘You Will Hear Thunder’ is one of her most renowned poems.