Biography

Oleg Strokatyy is a painter whose practice runs in parallel series that approach one subject — the inner state of a person — through different visual languages, among them psychological portraits (Visages), sign-like forms (Signa), diagrammatic structures (Structural Energy, Graphite State), gestural eruptions (Surge) and portraits of everyday objects (Common Forms). He works in acrylic on canvas and paper, and in charcoal.

Statement

I paint inner states — the pressure, the pause, the overload, the moment a mask stops working. That is the only subject. What changes from series to series is the language.

In Visages the state becomes a face: a profile in a field of signals, a persona forming or collapsing. In Signa it becomes a sign — a single dense form on a void, closer to a totem than to a picture. In Structural Energy and the Graphite State charcoal works it becomes a diagram: structure under pressure, flow finding its way through a grid. In Surge it erupts as gesture and colour. In Common Forms a cup or a scooter holds the same state without a figure at all.

I work in layers — acrylic, texture paste, charcoal — and let pressure, repetition and contrast do what a story would do in a narrative painting. The series are not styles I try on. They are different ways of asking one question.