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 - 'EIDOS - The Shape of Those With No Shape', Indra 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' curated by Ksenia Gorbatyuk, ZDES na Taganke Art Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2022 – 'Fragile Feminity', Marina Balkizova Art Studio, 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 group (member 2005-2019)
2019 – 'Sub specie aeternitatis', Rene Capitant Hall, Paris, France
2019 – 'The Sun in the Space of the Moon', Luna Art Gallery, Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia
2018 – 'Foret dan le Ciel', the French-Japanese Cultural Association Tenri, Paris, France
2018 – 'Sky Labyrinths', Rene Capitant Hall, Paris, France
2017 – 'Russia-France. On the Roads of Miracle', Mairie du5eme, Paris, France
2017 – 'Shades of Wonderful from Russia', Nautic club, Cambrils, Spain
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 – Exhibition in the Central House of Artists, Moscow, Russia
2013 – Exhibition of TM-Studia artists, AVA-Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
2012 – 'Summer Meetings. Autumn', Art hall of the Russian-German Meeting Center in Saint-Petersburg, Russia
2011 – Exhibition in the Central House of Artists, Moscow, Russia
2010 – Christmas exhibition, State Exhibition Hall 'Na Kashirke', Moscow, Russia
2008 – 'The Very Different Sides of Miracle - Shades of Miracle', Nizhny Novgorod State Exhibition Complex, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
2006 – 'The Inner Side of Miracle', Khodynka State Exhibition Hall, Moscow, Russia

Exhibitions curated
2019 – 'Sub specie aeternitatis', Rene Capitant Hall, Paris, France (in collaboration with Konstantin Kaufman)
2018 – 'Sky Labyrinths', Rene Capitant Hall, Paris, France (in collaboration with Konstantin Kaufman)
2017 – 'Russia – UK. Magical Meetings', the art hall of Mayfair School of English, London, UK

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

Collections
Works are in private collections in England, Scotland, Russia, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Finland, the USA and the Czech Republic.

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