Xenia Gray’s work pulses with emotional weight, drawing from the liminal space between expression and restraint. Her mixed-media portraits — layered in oil, acrylic, and charcoal — explore the emotional complexity of the human face and form. These compositions seem to wrestle with silence itself, translating personal memory and internal tension into tactile, gestural surfaces. Each piece communicates a private gravity, often hovering between presence and disappearance, holding space for things we carry but never articulate.
Raised amid the stark, industrial architecture of post-Soviet Siberia, Gray developed a visual language rooted in contrast and fragmentation. This backdrop, both harsh and haunting, shapes the emotional depth of her work. After earning an MA in advertisement design from Saint Petersburg State University of Technology and Design, she turned toward fine art with an eye trained in structure and communication, but a heart compelled by the ineffable. Her portraits are not merely representations but rather emotional terrains, layered with smudges and strokes that feel as though they’ve been whispered rather than painted.
Gray’s art resists easy resolution, echoing the complexity of inner life. She uses materials that blur the lines between permanence and transience — charcoal that erodes, oil that lingers, and acrylic that asserts. In her recent pieces, there’s a deliberate sense of incompletion, as though each subject has just turned away or is on the verge of speaking. This tension imbues her portraits with a quiet ferocity, a kind of emotional archaeology that leaves behind remnants of something once felt deeply but never fully shared.
More info: Website, Instagram.
