Nadia Ryzhakova

Nadia Ryzhakova is a Russia-born contemporary landscape artist. Nadia has a very strong academic training in applied Arts from Stroganov Academy of Arts in Moscow and has a master’s degree in Monumental Arts. She moved to London in 2010 where she began to experiment with digital iPad drawings. In a short period of time, Nadia had a publication in London Evening Standard, was interviewed by SkyNews and Victoria & Albert Museum invited her to run an iPad drawing class in collaboration with them. In 2015 Nadia with her family moved to the Cotswolds. There she retuned to traditional medium: oil on canvas.

In 2016, Nadia won John Palmer Painting Competition award and was featured in the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard. ‘I paint how I feel about reality rather than how I see it. Even though my paintings are representative to a large extent, I choose not to be completely in control of them. I provoke accidents to happen in paintings by making splashes of paint or letting paint flow freely on the surface of the canvas. Then out of that abstract, by placing a few details I would guide the viewer’s perception towards the idea that inspired me and let their imagination do the rest. I find this game of merging realistic and abstract together very fascinating. It is all about the fusion of something chaotic with precise and representative. The process of my work is an experiment for me more than anything else.’