Iryna Yermolova paints faces that are not quite finished, and that is where they live. Her portraits sit between realism and abstraction, figures emerging through texture and light rather than fixed likeness, the face treated as a site of emotion rather than identity.
Working in oil with a palette knife, she builds her surfaces in thick, directional strokes that retain the energy of each decision. The knife is central: it cannot fuss, cannot soften edges, cannot revise the way a brush can. What it produces is paint that feels immediate, even when the subject is introspective.
Originally from Ukraine and based in the UK since the 1990s, Yermolova has exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2025, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters at Mall Galleries, the London Art Fair, the Chianciano Biennale in Tuscany, and the Hamptons Fine Art Fair. She is represented across nine galleries internationally.
