Vera Iliatova

Gallery Affiliations: Monya Rowe Gallery

Region: Northeast

The heroines of my paintings are young women of similar age and stature. They exist in a self-referential world where architecture and landscape serve as artificial backdrops for their various activities. Occasionally, the paintings will have a group of men holding camera-recording equipment, to give another vantage point to the unfolding narrative.

The “girls” become an encyclopedia of expressions and gestures, from petty to overdramatic, often disconnected and of a mysterious origin. The gestures are drawn and re-enacted from mediated images, such as film stills, glossy magazines, and art history. I synthesize these varied sources into paintings that self-consciously observe the representation of women across visual media.

I enjoy creating these narrative structures with multiple levels of spatial and temporal depictions. A hierarchy of visual experience is created as I explore tactile qualities of paint, color and tonality. I also investigate formal and psychological implications of figures in landscape painting as seen through art history. Above all, I take great pleasure in seeing what will happen next to these women as seasons and locations alter.