Natalia Vypritskaia is a contemporary artist originally from the Republic of Bashkortostan, now living and working in Poznań, Poland. Moving between abstraction and figurative painting, her practice explores memory, emotional experience, identity and the fragile balance between inner and outer worlds.
Vypritskaia’s path to becoming an artist was far from conventional. Originally trained as an electrical engineer and later in economics, she returned to art during an intensely difficult period spent in hospital with her daughter. Drawing and painting became a means of processing fear, uncertainty and complex emotional states, gradually developing into a sustained artistic practice. She later studied the foundations of classical drawing and, for many years, worked primarily with still life and portraiture in oil.
Between 2008 and 2022, Vypritskaia lived in Kislovodsk, where she participated in local exhibitions, before relocating to Europe in 2022. The experience of migration and cultural transition became an important catalyst for a shift in her visual language, with abstraction increasingly taking a central role in her work. Working with acrylic, oil, texture paste and layered surfaces, she builds, removes and reconstructs areas of paint, allowing each canvas to accumulate its own physical and emotional history.
This process is particularly evident within her ongoing ‘Fragile States’ series, which examines moments of transition and instability, and the tension between order and chaos, structure and dissolution. Layers of colour and texture become a way of exploring how memory and experience remain within us, while works such as ‘Fragile Balance’, ‘Transition’, ‘Birth of Light’ and ‘Assembling the Self’ consider instability, transformation and the continuing process of forming a sense of self.
Her figurative works approach many of the same concerns from a different perspective, exploring observation, vulnerability, human connection and emotions that often remain unspoken. Across both strands of her practice, Vypritskaia is interested in what happens beneath the visible surface, and in how people carry the past, respond to change and search for balance within an uncertain world.
A member of the Union of Polish Visual Artists, Vypritskaia has exhibited in Poland and participated in international contemporary art competitions. Her work is held in private collections in Poland, Italy, the United States and Latvia. Since settling in Poznań in 2024, she has continued to develop her practice within the Polish and wider European contemporary art scene.
Are you self-taught, or did you undertake formal artistic training?
My journey into art combines a strong initial foundation, a serious academic background, and conscious, long-term self-education. In my youth, I attended a secondary school with an artistic focus, where the basics of drawing and painting were taught as extracurricular activities. Later, I chose a different academic path: I graduated from the petroleum institute as an electrical engineer and subsequently earned a second degree in economics from the Academy of Public Administration and Management under the President of the Republic of Bashkortostan.
However, the turning point that defined my life and brought me back to art occurred in 2006. My eldest daughter Julia fell seriously ill with cancer. We spent two long years fighting for her life at the oncology centre in Ufa, and it was there that we began painting together. Art became our only way to release the unbearable pain, fear and complex emotional states onto paper and canvas.
This experience of deep transformation through creativity forever changed us both. Later, Julia graduated from the institute as an international economist but, like me, eventually returned to art. Today, she practises calligraphy and works as a designer for a major company.
Since 2006, I have completely dedicated myself to painting. I continuously practise as an independent artist, constantly learning from various professional sources. My technical and economic background helps me to approach the realisation of large-scale projects in a structured way, but it was those two years in the oncology centre that laid the foundation for my visual language and deep understanding of the fragility of human existence.
How would you define your visual language or conceptual approach?
In my paintings, I explore what happens inside a person – their emotions, memory and internal changes. My visual language is divided into two directions: abstract paintings and figurative works depicting human images.
In my abstract works, such as the ‘Fragile States’ series, layers and texture are what matter most to me. I apply paint and texture paste, scrape it off with a palette knife, and apply it again. Each painting becomes like a cake made of many layers. For me, this is a metaphor for human life: nothing we experience ever truly disappears. Resentments, joys and heavy experiences – all of this layers on top of each other inside us and shapes our character.
Through these layers and the collisions of vibrant and dark patches, I try to show a ‘fragile balance’ – that moment in life when the ground slips from beneath your feet, everything changes, and a person tries to find a new footing.
In my paintings with human images, such as ‘Observer’, ‘Vidi’ and ‘Moment’, I use large, bold brushstrokes and strong colour contrasts. It is important to me to convey not just a beautiful face, but a character, a hidden strength, or a past pain frozen in a gaze.
My engineering background is highly beneficial to my work: thanks to it, I know how to clearly build a composition, maintain balance on the canvas, and manage the chaos of colours. Overall, my art is a conversation about the immense complexity of a person’s inner world, which may appear entirely ordinary from the outside.
Can you describe your creative process from conception to completion?
My creative process always begins from within – with a strong emotional impulse, a memory, or a reflection on a specific state of being. I never make detailed preliminary sketches on paper because a living emotion cannot be forced into the strict boundaries of a blueprint. Instead, I go straight to the canvas with a general feeling, compositional axes, and a primary colour palette in mind.
The process of working on a painting consists of three important stages.
First, laying the foundation and chaos. I start by creating the lower layers. At this stage, I work very expressively and freely. If it is an abstraction, I apply deep, dark or vibrant acrylic colours, establishing the overall temperature of the piece. If it is a figurative painting, I often create a bright red or dark underpainting, as seen in ‘Moment’, which will later shine through the upper layers to create an effect of internal glow.
Second, working with texture and layering. This is the longest phase. I actively use a palette knife, large brushes, oil pastels and thick texture paste. I literally build the relief of the painting – applying paint with dense impasto strokes, scratching the surface, scraping away entire sections and covering them anew. The painting lives its own life, developing a history and physical depth.
Third, finding balance and the finale. At this stage, my engineering mindset comes into play. Out of the chaos of strokes and layers, I begin to construct a clear structure. I add final contrasts such as fine lines, sharp flashes of light shades or, conversely, dense dark blocks that balance the composition.
During the creation process, the painting truly lives its own life. In this world, everything changes constantly, and we change as well. It happens that after some time I look at a canvas and see that it could be expanded or altered. However, I consciously try not to add anything more to a completed painting. For me, a finished work is an untouchable territory of memory of a specific moment in life. This story is not rewritten – it simply continues further in my new works.
Does narrative, symbolism or storytelling play a role within your work?
There is no direct, literal plot in my paintings. I do not recount specific everyday stories or life events. My goal is to convey the state itself, the inner feeling that remains with a person after a certain experience.
However, symbolism plays a huge role in my work. These are hidden clues and markers of presence through which the viewer can read the painting. Colours, titles and individual elements become symbols.
For instance, in my figurative paintings, I often use a cold, steel-blue colour for human skin, as in ‘Vidi’. This is a symbol of deep internal pain and trauma that cannot be expressed in ordinary words but remains forever in the body and the gaze. The Latin title of this painting, ‘Vidi’ – ‘I saw’ – is also a symbol, emphasising the weight of personal, solitary knowledge.
In the ‘Calligraphy’ series, lines and letters transform into streams of pure energy, but important symbols are concealed within them, such as the outlines of a smile in ‘Joy in the Shadow’. This is a story about how joy is always present in our lives, even if it is hidden beneath layers of heavy experiences.
My paintings tell a story not through a linear narrative, but through associations. The image of the Observer in my works, such as ‘Observer’, is a symbol of our hidden ‘Self’, our ability to look at ourselves from a distance without ego or judgement.
I give the viewer a starting point through texture, colour or a title, but the final story is assembled by each individual, filtering my art through the prism of their own life experience. It is incredibly valuable to me that every viewer sees something unique of their own in my paintings.
Which artists have heavily influenced you in a historical or contemporary context, and why?
In a historical context, I was most heavily moved by the biography and work of Amedeo Modigliani. His dramatic life, full of struggle, and the way he depicted people touch me deeply. In his portraits, faces and figures seem stretched from internal tension, and the eyes often appear closed or empty, yet they are incredibly piercing. Modigliani showed that a portrait can convey melancholy itself, loneliness and the fragility of the human soul.
My deep dialogue with his art resulted in the painting ‘Red Dream’ – oil on canvas. This work resonated so strongly with viewers that its first version was immediately sold to a private collector, and soon after, a collector from Italy asked me to create an author’s replica for him. In the second version, I intentionally introduced changes, adding more of my signature texture and altering the nuances of the background, which left the buyer absolutely thrilled.
Among more contemporary artists, I feel closest to the German artist Gerhard Richter. His personal story of escaping from East Germany to West Germany for creative freedom resonates very strongly in my heart. I grew up in the USSR and felt first-hand the heavy weight of that rigid system, which surrounded us with its grey clothing and austere, smileless faces.
After my relocation from Russia to Poland in 2022, I am currently experiencing the same complex emotions of adaptation and breaking with the past, so I understand Richter and his feelings more closely than ever. His technique of working with layers of paint – where he applies colour and then uses scrapers and palette knives to erase, scratch and remove layers – is visually very close to me.
In my ‘Fragile States’ series, I use a similar approach: through layering and scraping texture paste, I try to break through the grey ‘shell’ of the past, overcome the internal tension of emigration, and release living colour, light and new hopes.
What personal, cultural or environmental factors influence your practice?
My work is influenced by two powerful factors: my deep spiritual experience and the cultural tectonic shifts I have passed through.
The personal and spiritual foundation for me was two months spent in my youth in India, at the ashram of the teacher Sai Baba while he was still alive. This experience completely transformed my consciousness. There, I learned meditation, the ability to silence mental chaos, and developed a capacity for deep, non-judgemental contemplation.
It was this Indian philosophy that laid the groundwork for my key figurative works ‘Observer’ and ‘Observer in the Room’. I believe that within each of us, there is this hidden Inner Observer, our true ‘Self’, which impartially witnesses everything that happens without becoming entangled in the judgements of the ego.
The cultural and social factor is my Soviet childhood with its rigid systemic boundaries and grey clothes, as well as my recent relocation from Russia to Poland in 2022. My paintings are a way to process this cultural shock, the pain of adaptation, and the fragility of life in emigration, transforming heavy external circumstances into a free visual language.
Where is your studio located, and how does this space influence your work?
My studio is currently located in Poznań, Poland, in the apartment where I live with my family. This is a temporary solution dictated by the circumstances of emigration, and such a specific space exerts a colossal influence on my work.
On one hand, a home studio imposes strict technical limitations. Due to the modest size of the rooms, I physically cannot unfold and paint the huge, monumental canvases I have long dreamed of. I have to restrain the scale of the stretchers.
On the other hand, this spatial confinement paradoxically forces me to condense emotions on the canvas. Lacking the opportunity to expand in scale, I go into depth – making the relief of the paintings more compressed, complex, concentrated and multi-layered.
Furthermore, working at home turns the creation of paintings into an uninterrupted life process. My workshop is not separated from daily life – art is woven into every day of my family. In conditions where the external world outside the window has changed, my home studio has become my main sacred space, a personal safe haven and therapy, where I daily find that very ‘fragile balance’ to which my works are dedicated.
Do you have any rituals in the studio or specific rhythms that anchor your practice?
My studio rituals and rhythms are aimed at switching my brain as quickly as possible from the mode of everyday household chores to the mode of pure creativity. Since my workshop is in the apartment, I need clear triggers that separate daily life from art.
My main daily ritual before starting work is creating the right audio atmosphere. I always turn on deep meditative music or ambient sounds. These sounds serve as an invisible wall that completely cuts off the outside world. I might drink a cup of tea, just sitting opposite the canvas and tuning into its wavelength.
The second important ritual is preparing the tools. I am a very tactile artist, so arranging my palette knives, preparing thick texture paste, and mixing the palette is an important personal process. Bringing order to the workspace before the chaos of colours begins on the canvas helps me mentally gather myself.
Speaking of rhythms, I prefer to work in the first half of the day when the best natural light falls into the room. I paint in sessions of several hours, completely immersing myself in the process.
Regularity is very important to me: I try to approach the canvas every day, even if it is just applying one thin layer of paste, scraping away an unsuccessful area, or studying what was done yesterday. This continuous rhythm of layering paint keeps me focused and is the very anchor that stabilises my life.
What areas of work or projects are you currently working on?
Right now, my entire focus is centred on exploring how people are interconnected, how they can coexist with themselves, with others, and with our constantly changing world. For me, this is a deeply personal and acute topic.
My work currently runs in parallel across two directions that complement each other. The first direction is the continuation of my abstract series ‘Fragile States’. Here, through layering, texture and colour, I explore the theme of a person’s coexistence with themselves and their past. I try to show how heavy memories, the trauma of relocation and, at the same time, hope for the future live together within us. These paintings are a search for inner balance and support at moments when the external world is storming.
The second direction is figurative, where I transition to a more detailed study of the interconnectedness of people and society. My paintings with images such as ‘Observer in the Room’, ‘Vidi’ and ‘Moment’ are precisely an attempt to look into the reverse side of human relationships.
I explore how we look at each other, how we hide our true feelings behind ‘high collars’, as in the work ‘Moment’, and how difficult it is sometimes to open up to another person due to the fear of being hurt.
My main goal in current projects is to create a space for dialogue on canvas. I want the viewer, looking at my works, to reflect on their own connection to the world, to feel their internal threads connecting them to other people, and to realise that even in the most fragile moments, we are capable of finding harmony and coexisting together.
Where can collectors see or buy your work?
You can get closer to my work and purchase original paintings on my official website: www.nv-art.net. This platform presents my current portfolio, project concepts, as well as links to my social media, where I regularly share footage of the creative process from my studio.
For collectors from all over the world, my works are also available on prestigious international art and design platforms, Saatchi Art and Pamono.
I am delighted to share an important achievement for me: quite recently, my small but highly energetic still life ‘Citrus Morning’ was officially selected by the Saatchi Art curatorial team for their renowned global collection ‘New This Week’. For me, this became an important professional confirmation that my visual language resonates with experts in the international art market.
Alongside large-scale abstract series and figurative canvases, I continue to work in small formats, creating expressive, textured still lifes with flowers and fruits. In these works, I maintain the same focus on the power of colour, rhythm and tangible texture.
Collectors can always contact me directly through the website to discuss individual commissions or to view available works in my studio.
