About me
At the heart of my painting is a paradox I can’t resolve — and maybe don’t want to.
When I was still a student, working on the final painting for my degree, something inside me began to break. I had intended to create a realistic, three-dimensional likeness of a friend. And in some areas, the brushstrokes obeyed — they formed a recognisable face. But in others, the paint resisted. It began to fragment, to spiral, to drift into abstraction. The more I tried to control it, the more it slipped. What I was wrestling with on the canvas mirrored what was happening inside my mind: I was descending into a psychotic depression, losing contact with reality. That moment — of trying to stitch realism and abstraction into one image while my grip on the world was dissolving — marked something that has never left me.
I paint now from a much safer place, but I return to that edge — carefully, deliberately — in every work I make. I begin with poured paint: acrylics that spread, pool, and collide into organic shapes I cannot entirely predict. They remind me of the parts of the brain we don’t control. Then, slowly, I reintroduce the figure — often my own children, who act as bridges to my earlier self. I don’t aim to tame the chaos of the paint, but to converse with it. This act — placing a tangible form into an unstable ground — is both therapeutic and symbolic. It allows me to revisit the trauma of my early breakdown, not as threat, but as memory.
Born in the USSR in 1982, I was a child at the moment when one system was collapsing and no clear new one had emerged. It was a time of confusion, revision, contradiction. That too lives in my paintings — the sense of blurred ground, of shifting narratives. I now live and work in the Cotswolds, where I paint in a studio at the Painswick Centre. It’s quiet here, and the quiet lets the past rise gently.
My style is not fixed. Sometimes the figure nearly disappears into the paint. Sometimes the forms stay separate, like two languages trying to understand one another. But I no longer see abstraction and realism as opposites. I see them as two sides of the same truth — the seen and the felt, the known and the barely held.
Painting is how I hold those contradictions without needing to solve them. It’s how I approach the most painful part of my past with softness, and without fear. I don’t want to return to that dark place. But I do want to keep learning from it — and painting gives me a way to do that.
Selected Exhibitions:
| 2025 |
18-19, 25-26 October 2025, Autumn Arts Trail, Art Studios, The Painswick Centre, Bisley Street, Painswick, GL6 6QQ |
| 2025 |
6 July - 6 September 2025, Summer Exhibition of Fosse Gallery Artists, Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, GL54 1AF |
| 2024 |
1 - 31 December 2024, Winter Exhibition of Fosse Gallery Artists, Stow-on-the-Wold, GL54 1AF |
| 2024 |
22 - 27 October 2024, Uncharted Realities - a two-men show by Nadia Ryzhakova and Michele Silk, Walcot Chapel Arts Space, Walcot Chapel Street, Walcot Gate, Bath BA1 5UG |
| 2024 |
12-13, 19-20 October 2024, Autumn Arts Trail, The Painswick Centre, Bisley Street, Painswick, GL6 6QQ |
| 2024 |
30 June - 31 August 2024, Summer Exhibition of Fosse Gallery Artists, Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, GL54 1AF |
| 2023-2024 |
26 November 2023 - 2 January 2024, Christmas Exhibition of Gallery Artists, Fosse Gallery Fine Art, The Manor House, The Square, Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire, GL54 1AF |
| 2023 |
7th - 23rd December, Small Works Winter Show, Spring Cheltenham Gallery, 14 Rotunda Terrace, |
| 2023 |
10th - 15th October, Regeneration Group Exhibition, The Setting Gallery, Three Storeys, Nailsworth, GL6 0JE |
|
2023 |
9th July – 28th August, The Summer Exhibition of Fosse Gallery Artists, Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, GL54 1AF |
|
2023 |
3d – 11th June, Summer Open Exhibition, Lansdown Gallery, Stroud |
|
2022-2023 |
27th Nov - 28th Jan, Winter Exhibition of Fosse Gallery Artists, Stow-on-the-Wold, GL54 1AF |
|
2022 |
10th Jul – 29th Aug, Summer Exhibition of Fosse Gallery Artists, Stow-on-the-Wold, GL54 1AF |
|
2021-2022 |
28th Nov 2021 – 1st Jan 2022, Christmas Exhibition of Fosse Gallery Artists, Stow-on-the-Wold, GL54 1AF |
|
2021 |
11th Jul – 31 Aug, Mixed Summer Exhibition of Fosse Gallery Artists, Stow-on-the-Wold, GL54 1AF |
|
2020-2021 |
4th Dec 2020 - 2d Jan 2021, Christmas Exhibition of Fosse Gallery Artists, Stow-on-the-Wold, GL54 1AF |
|
2020 |
1st – 2nd Feb, New Work by West Oxfordshire Artists, West Ox Arts Gallery, Bampton |
|
2020 |
10th Jan – 29th Feb, Group Exhibition, Dove Gallery, Winchcombe |
|
2019 |
2nd -8th Oct, An Extraordinary Art Exhibition, Lower Slaughter Village Hall, Lower Slaughter |
|
2019 |
26th – 31st Aug, Summer Exhibition, Warwick Hall, Burford |
|
2019 |
30th Jun – 2nd Sep, Summer Exhibition of Gallery Artists, Fosse Gallery, Stow-on-the-Wold, GL54 1AF |
|
2019 |
11th May – 8th June, Oxfordshire Art Weeks, West Ox Arts Gallery, Bampton |
|
2019 |
19th – 23d Apr, An Extraordinary Art Exhibition, Chipping Campden Town Hall, Chipping Campden |
|
2018 |
3rd – 9th Oct, An Extraordinary Art Exhibition, Lower Slaughter Village Hall, Lower Slaughter |
|
2018 |
14th – 23rd Sep, Autumn Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, Nature in Art, Wallsworth Hall, Gloucester |
|
2018 |
29th Aug – 1st Sep, Summer Art Exhibition of NCAA Artists, Warwick Hall, Burford |
|
2018 |
1st -3rd June, Discover Gather Give, Contemporary Arts Fair, Stratford Town Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon |
|
2018 |
29th Mar – 3rd Apr, An Extraordinary Art Exhibition, Chipping Campden Town Hall, Chipping Campden |
|
2017 |
4th – 10th Oct, An Extraordinary Art Exhibition, Lower Slaughter Village Hall, Lower Slaughter |
|
2017 |
13th – 18th Apr, An Extraordinary Art Exhibition, Chipping Campden Town Hall, Chipping Campden |
|
2017 |
13th – 20th Jan Cotswolds Inspired Art Exhibition, Corinium Museum, Cirencester |
|
2016 |
30th Nov – 10th Dec, Cirencester Art Society Winter Exhibition, Parish Church of St John Baptist, Cirencester |
|
2016 |
16th – 20th May, Memory and Perception Art Exhibition, Millbrook Lodge, Gloucester |
|
2014 |
26th -27th July, Summer Arts Fair, Hays Galleria, London |
|
2014 |
30th Mar – 24th May, The iPainting Exhibition, Deli Felice, London |
|
2013 |
26th -28th Apr, The Other Art Fair, London |
|
2013 |
5th Mar – 24th May, Londonist Underground Images, Bishopsgate Institute, London |
|
2013 |
3rd – 31st Mar, Casual London, Solo Exhibition, the Art-Café ZOOM, St. Petersburg, Russia |
|
|
|