Visual artist Polina Smirnova Follow.Art Card

About me

Polina Smirnova (b. 2000) is a Latvian painter based in London and a graduate of the BA Fine Art Painting at the University of Brighton. She is a recipient of the Liberty Art Award 2024 and, as part of the award, was selected for the Expert Judge’s Award for her work Green Age. She has exhibited in the UK and Latvia, with recent highlights including a solo exhibition featured in the Riga Art Week programme.

I work with the material of my own life, drawing from the moments that pierce through the mundane - those of vulnerability and exposure. Although visually playful, my work tends to carry an underlying sense of impending doom, revealing the ambiguities of the lived experiences. Vibrant colour palettes and expressive brushstrokes disrupt the certainty of a depicted scene, tumbling between the literal and the figurative.
Nature plays a central role in my life and paintings, becoming a reflection of memory, fantasy, and identity. Emulating the ability of the light to define an emotional state, I approach colours and gestural marks as a way to reveal different facets of the narrative.
I let the painting unfold directly on the canvas, allowing the brush to guide me toward where the life of a painting lies. Otherwise, the sense of discovery feels staged, and the magic fades. I approach painting as an evolving form, capturing its malleability before it becomes stale.