Sylvia Solovyeva emerges from the rugged landscapes of Kamchatka, later transplanted to Moscow, carrying in her memory both isolation and expansiveness. She pursued formal education in graphic design at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow, yet her true voice found its medium in painting. After a period of creative silence, she returned to active artistic life in 2020, presenting a solo exhibition in 2021 and steadily forging a renewed path in the world of contemporary art.
Her visual language brims with emotion liberated from form. She uses exaggerated strokes, contrasts of bold color, and a certain theatrical flair to convey psychological states. Rather than render literal scenes, she seeks to externalize the internal: impulses, tensions, and desires that defy precise description. In her own words, she strives to push beyond realism and release her imagination “engulfing” — a phrase that speaks to the emotional scale she aims for.
In her creative method, she often begins with what troubles her in the moment — a nagging feeling, an unresolved question. From that seed she sketches, then layers, changes, subverts, and reforms until the composition feels “complete”. She describes this act as less planning and more dialogue between conscious thought and intuitive impulse. In 2020 she began weaving poetry written by her husband Nikolay into her works, so that painting and verse narrate parallel yet intertwined versions of the same emotional narrative.
One of her known works, Resistance, offers a strong example of how she channels tension through abstraction. In that piece, forms seem to press, recoil, reach out, or hold back, all wrapped in an intense palette. The tension between movement and stasis, between desire and constraint, becomes almost tangible. Through such works she refuses complacency—her imagery resists settling into decorative ease.
What distinguishes Solovyeva is how she balances urgency with care. Her works demand a degree of attention — not mere glance but absorption. And yet, she tempers that demand with sensitivity: every color shift, every brush arc, is calibrated to a mood or question. In an era saturated by polished surfaces, her paintings feel visceral: like thoughts made visible. In following her trajectory from early aspiration, silence, reinvention, and now expansion, one witnesses not just an artist’s rebirth but an ongoing quest to shape feeling into form.
More info: Website, Instagram (h/t: ITSLIQUID).
