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There’s growing anxiety in times of sweeping changes like today. What is its message?ĪP: Technology is disrupting industry, culture and our way of living.

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Q: Your latest tech-themed series is titled #disrupt. This is a new century: the century of technology and painting human portraiture is too archaic it’s the Machine that holds the reins of power today. When we look at the history of art, portraiture is the most reoccurring theme: portraiture was reserved first for Gods, then Aristocracy, then the common men. I like using the old medium (oil painting) to tell the story of innovation – it’s that contrast, dissonance of old and new, jazz of different ideas that excites me. I see the role of an artist as a compass, a DJ re-mix the Old and New, perhaps an oracle for what the future might bring. They are very connected – I might even say that machines represent the best of humanity: every time man wants to do something great he builds a machine! Machine is nothing else than an extension of the human mind, human ideas made real. You see I was trained as a portrait painter. Was that intentional?ĪP: Oh yes! That is the premise of my work. Q: It’s often said about your work that you “humanize machines”. Most of my influences are European and Soviet/Russian artists: Ilya Repin, Vladimir Makovsky, Valentin Serov.įrom the contemporary, living artists, Jenny Saville for her painting style She’s one of the most talented and creative contemporary painters and I respect her for the mastery of craft and technical aspects of her painting. Q: Which artists and styles are your biggest influences?ĪP: I grew up in Eastern Europe surrounded by Soviet propaganda posters so that certainly shaped my taste to some extent. That said, I have many collectors who are men and they support my work because they are acutely aware that being an artist is a hard career path for a woman. So, it’s a bit of an uphill battle – making it in the art world, you know. On average, only 30% of artists represented by commercial galleries in the U.S. Only 26% of the winners of the Turner Prize, one of the most well-known visual art awards, have been women. In a study of 820,000 exhibitions across the public and commercial sectors in 2018, only one third were by women artists (The Art Newspaper, 2019) let’s start with some facts: female artists are underrepresented in museums and galleries.

Q: What unique challenges do you face as a female artist?ĪP: Well.

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