Elena Goyeva
painting
I am a Ukrainian artist based in Kraków. I completed postgraduate studies in painting at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków (ASP im. Jana Matejki).
I work primarily in painting — oil and acrylic — as well as in graphic techniques (linocut, drypoint) and watercolor. My diploma cycle DOM shaped the beginning of my artistic practice; it was later followed by the triptych RETENCJA (2026, Galeria MIKO). Alongside this, I paint landscapes — small square canvases, both realistic and semi-abstract.
I have participated in exhibitions and art fairs in Poland.
Group exhibition
Education
2026
Post-graduate studies, Painting — Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, Kraków
Artist statement
I paint what remains when everything else disappears.
My practice encompasses oil and acrylic painting, printmaking, and watercolor — but despite the different mediums and themes, I am always interested in one thing: the trace of presence where something is already absent. Empty clothes that retain the shape of a body. A roof without walls. A landscape where the light is about to change and will never be the same again.
My diploma project spoke of home as something recognized precisely at the moment of loss — through a hole in the canvas, an empty chair, a sewn seam. Later, I transferred this theme to clothing — an object that holds the shape and memory of a person longer than the person themselves remains nearby.
In landscapes, this same sensitivity works differently: I choose a small square format and work on the edge of realism and semi-abstraction to capture not a view, but a feeling — silence, light, the moment before disappearance.
I create these works because art is the only way I know to hold onto what would otherwise go unnoticed.
Contacts