ABOUT IRENE MAKAROVA

IRENE MAKAROVA is a contemporary painter based in London

ARTIST STATEMENT

I see my work as a balance between play and exploration, where reality intertwines with imagination, memory, and myth. As a child, I believed in invisible rules — step on a crack, make a wish; hide under a blanket, and nothing can harm you. These childhood beliefs shaped my way of seeing the world, where something unseen hides behind the visible, and the familiar always covers the unfamiliar.

I start with quick sketches—faces, gestures, and fleeting moments captured from everyday life — and then transform them into oil paintings featuring creatures that feel both recognizable and unsettling and worlds where the real and the imagined coexist. Inspired by medieval art, ancient miniatures, and folklore, I reshape familiar figures, shift scales, and blend elements that don’t typically belong together.

I paint with oil as I love its depth and vibrancy. It lets me create layers—both physically and metaphorically – arranging figures across different spaces, as if they exist in multiple worlds at once.

For me, there’s a certain mystery in things that can’t be fully defined and in faces that seem human but hold something beyond the ordinary. My paintings are a way to create a visual structure to reveal what lies beneath the surface of the everyday — hidden reality just out of reach. They are like doorways into this in-between space, that defies easy interpretation.

Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 – Turps End-of-Residency Show, Turps Gallery, London, UK
2025 – Eidos, Indra Gallery, London, UK
2024 – Autumn Exhibition, Tower Gallery, London, UK
2024 – Summer Show, Shtager & Shch Gallery, London, UK
2024 – Fallacious Memory, Walcot Chapel Gallery, Bath, UK
2023 – ThreadED, Fringe Arts Bath Festival, Bath, UK
2022 – WOW, Zdes na Taganke Art Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2022 – Shooting Stars, Zdes na Taganke Art Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2021 – Looking after the Earthlings, ZDES na Taganke Art Gallery, Moscow, Russia

Exhibitions with TM-Studia Art Collective (member until 2019)
2019 – Sub specie aeternitatis, Rene Capitant Hall, Paris, France
2018 – Foret dan le Ciel, the French-Japanese Cultural Association Tenri, Paris, France
2017 – Russia-France. On the Roads of Miracle, Mairie du5eme, Paris, France
2016 – Exhibition of TM - Studia artists, Sorrento, Italy
2015 – Exhibition of TM - Studia artists, Galeria 15, Paris, France
2015 – The Bed of the Magic River, the Russian Museum of Photography, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
2014 – TM-Studia Exhibition in the Central House of Artists, Moscow, Russia
2013 – Exhibition of TM-Studia artists, AVA-Gallery, Helsinki, Finland

Exhibitions curated
TM-Studia Art Collective Exhibitions in 2017 - 1019, the most significant of which are:
2019 – Sub specie aeternitatis, Rene Capitant Hall, Paris, France (in collaboration with K. Kaufman)
2019 – Sun in Lunar Space, Moon Art Gallery, Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia (in collaboration with K. Kaufman)
2018 – Sky Labyrinths, Rene Capitant Hall, Paris, France (in collaboration with K. Kaufman)

Residencies
3.10.2025 – 30.11.2025 Turps Banana Art Residency, London, UK

Fairs
2016 – ART-Russia, Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia
2014 – Art Shopping, Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, France (represented by AVA Gallery, Finland)

Collections
Works are held in private collections in the UK, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Finland, Russia and the USA

Education
2019 – Contemporary art course (HSE University, Moscow, Russia)
2018 – Painting and drawing course (Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov, Russia)
2008 – Design of Architectural Environment (MARKHI – State Academy of Architecture, Moscow, Russia)
2005 – Studied painting at the Studio of the Russian artist Konstantin Kaufman since 2005
2003 – Linguistics & Intercultural Communication (Moscow State Linguistic University, Russia)