Lania The Artist (lania Roberts)

LaNia Roberts, known as LaNia the Artist, is a nationally recognized fine artist from Louisville, Kentucky and a first-generation college graduate with a BFA in Painting from Syracuse University (’19). Her work has been collected by KADIST and 21c Museum Hotels. Rooted in memory, identity, and liberation, her paintings use vibrant non-naturalistic color — cobalt, fuchsia, orange, violet — layered acrylic, and paper collage to honor the sacred complexity of Black life. She builds portraits from hundreds of photographs of her own family, multiplying features (extra arms, extra eyes, extra mouths) to capture the multidimensional experience of Blackness. She has traveled and studied in over a dozen countries across Africa, Europe, and North America. Beyond art, LaNia is a writer, speaker, and singer with nearly half a million followers and 60 million+ video views online. In 2024 she released her debut vocal album, *Born on Sunday (The Sketch)*, and in 2025 signed a book deal with HarperCollins Zondervan.