Iryna Yermolova
Iryna Yermolova is a contemporary painter born in Ukraine and based in Dorset, UK. She moved to England in 2005, where the landscape and light of the countryside continue to inform her practice.
Iryna holds academic qualifications in both graphic design and economics. Her early creative work focused on digital and computer-based art before she turned to painting, a shift that proved transformative and marked a decisive change in her artistic direction. Her background in graphic design remains evident in her strong sense of composition and visual structure.
Her work has been widely exhibited and collected. Notably, for fourteen consecutive years, Iryna has been selected to exhibit at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters Annual Exhibition at Mall Galleries, London—an exceptional achievement that reflects the consistency and quality of her practice.
Iryna’s paintings are known for their warmth and depth, making them particularly well suited to contemporary interiors and resonating strongly with collectors.
View a selection of Iryna’s works below ↓ Click on the images to enlarge.
Artist Statement
“I paint to understand what words often fail to express. My work is rooted in figurative oil painting, but it lives in the space between realism and abstraction—where emotion, memory, and identity blur. Faces appear and dissolve, emerging from texture and light like thoughts half-formed. I am drawn to portraiture not for likeness, but for the emotional resonance it carries: the vulnerability, the contradictions, the quiet truths.
My process is tactile and intuitive. I prefer cloth, fingers, and palette knives over brushes—tools that let me shape emotion directly onto the canvas. The physicality of painting helps me access something raw and real. My surfaces are layered with imperfections, softness, and light—echoes of the stories I carry.
Though recent years have brought upheaval—my husband’s death, war in my homeland, and the shift into midlife—I do not paint sadness. I paint happiness that has been tested. My canvases hold joy, love, and safety, but also the doubts and fears that make those feelings more precious.
Painting, for me, is a process of becoming. And right now, I am becoming something joyful.”
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