Kseniia Fleisher
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Apr 26
- 6 min read
Kseniia Fleisher paints directly on canvas. She lets the figures come as they are, without drawing them first. Her work grows from gestures and memories, often through the way the body holds emotion. She returns to certain themes again and again—fragility, tension, repair. These elements shape the pace of her process. Some surfaces stay bare, others carry rough marks. The canvas holds whatever remains after the moment passes. Her paintings give space to quiet feelings that stay under the surface.
Q: Your work feels more like a space than a scene. What makes a painting feel lived in?
A: Yes, you're right — it's a space, a space for the endless flight of meanings that I set as an artist, and the viewer chooses their own direction. But my canvases are also like fragments of memory captured on film — a reel of life preserved in a series or frame.
I paint many characters who perform for the public in various roles, and the viewer is invited backstage — not into my scene on the canvas, but into their own thoughts and fantasies.
You are right, it is indeed a space — that's the whole point: you look at the painting and interpret your own arguments and inner impressions of what has been painted. You inhabit the story through your personal perception and dialogue.
What makes the plot feel "lived in" is the emotional context, which each person perceives in their own way. In my world, it's a stage where each character plays a role — a different one for everyone. Offering you, the viewer, space for imagination and a personal conversation with yourself.
Q: You don’t sketch first. What do you gain by starting straight on the canvas?
A: Some artists need a detailed preliminary study to construct their painting — composition, colour scheme, a sketch. But my approach is different. I'm confident that both my starting and finishing point will be exactly how I need it to be from the beginning, based on the idea in my imagination.
Any perceived flaws or inconsistencies in my painting are, in fact, advantages. I am not afraid to make a mistake.
This is the essence of my concept: painting my personal experience, which cannot be pre-planned with a sketch. We cannot predict the experiences we will go through in life — we simply move forward, sometimes receiving polished, refined experiences, and sometimes painful, imperfect ones. That is the “life” of my canvases.
I see the painting in my mind and transfer it directly to the canvas with confidence.
Preliminary sketching feels stifling to me. I allow myself to modify and change elements during the process, as my view, perception, and intention shift.
You could say I build the story intuitively and avoid putting myself into strict frameworks. This is easier for me — it allows me to feel imperfection and avoid striving for ideal, calculated solutions in my art.
Q: "The Right to Touch" brings in the language of repair. What spoke to you in kintsugi?
A: Not quite. This work demonstrates, in every sense, how we fail to value and care for ourselves, how we don’t set personal boundaries for a long time and let the world treat us as it pleases — not as we need.
And sometimes, in order to establish those boundaries, we have to undergo a non-verbal form of life’s cruelty, so we can begin to appreciate ourselves.
We carry ingrained patterns — from childhood, from adulthood — and each of us adapts to the world in our own way.
These methods of survival are not always healthy for our bodies and souls.
"The Right to Touch" is about the healthy kind of self-centredness — a personal rulebook. Not everyone who wants to touch a painting in a museum is allowed to do so. If we allow this kind of access completely and without control, then soon nothing will be left of art — nothing that once had the power to awe us.
In this metaphor, the valuable artwork is us.
I love meanings, and my art and concepts intersect deeply with the Japanese tradition of kintsugi.
Every day, in some way, we piece ourselves back together — and lose parts of ourselves again. Before we reach wholeness, or whatever we consider wholeness, we often lose fragments.
The use of precious metal in kintsugi represents how we try to soothe our cracks with something material, or cover ourselves in gloss so as not to show the world our vulnerability.
The cracks are our personality, formed by experience and hardship.
As I’ve said before, I believe in the soul — and that the soul receives many slaps in the course of life. Its restoration is the strength of spirit, and in that lies the delicate meaning of kintsugi: that despite visual imperfection, something becomes even more valuable because of its healing, and the meaning that is embedded in it. The meaning we give to ourselves. And the boundaries we create to protect that meaning.
Q: "Waiting Place" holds memory at a distance. How do you paint something you can’t fully reach?
A: It’s a proven fact that memory is often something we have constructed ourselves. But I believe the body always remembers what the heart once lived through — even if the brain wants to trap us in illusion.
There’s an animated film called Soul, and it says that just because someone or something is no longer near us, doesn’t mean it doesn’t live on in our heart.
These things remain — in our hearts, in memory, and in what we’ve experienced.
We react to triggers, and I’m no exception. I react physically to a trigger, and my brain signals: “You’ve been through this before.”
That “absent” part of ourselves is still alive within us, influencing our thoughts and actions. I call this a response.
We retain patterns — ones we either pursue or long to change.
Memory is time, and time is almost always subject to revision.
I don’t agree with the idea that if I cannot physically touch something, I also cannot touch it with my heart, my soul, or this response.
In fact, it is through my hand and brush that I physically reach out to something that would otherwise remain sacred in thought alone.
In my series of works, I try to convey this very idea — that we keep running around the same chair, like in that childhood game. It’s an endless race that can last a lifetime.
Or we store that emotion in the “allegory of the chair” — the waiting room of our mind.
Because physically, those events are no longer with us — but the feeling in the body remains.
Our bodies are always in contact with certain moments through the residue of physical memory.
Q: You treat figures like performers. What makes a pose carry emotion?
A: I’ve loved ballet since childhood. I believe there is no more beautiful form of dance than this classical genre.
I’m inspired by the grace, fragility, and endurance of these delicate people.
To me, life is a kind of dance — one where we must be flexible, resilient, and possess a strong inner core.
I can’t precisely explain how a particular pose appears on the canvas — it comes from intuition, emotional response, and the thousands of images of dancing (and still) human bodies I carry in my mind.
I’m drawn to a sense of flight or closure in the figure.
To be honest, what we see on the canvas is a mirror of my inner state at the time it was created.
A pose holds emotion when it begins to express the inner self. There is no language more accessible to a human being than the language of their own body.
It can be fluid and light, or it can be tired and aching — like in the paintings of Egon Schiele. That’s the point of my mention of ballet: each painting carries, through movement, a certain spine — in every sense.
Every figure, to me, is a character playing a role in the narrative of my inner world.
It all gives meaning — even if there are no words. For each viewer, their own.
Q: Your surfaces are raw and exposed. What do they reveal that polish wouldn’t?
A: As I’ve already said — both the soul and the physical self carry scars and roughness from life. I call this lived experience.
We can smooth it out, but it is experience that allows us to reach gloss — if that is what we feel we need to hide what we’ve been through.
My sense of beauty intersects with “ugliness” — because time does not show mercy.
My self doesn’t align with perfection. Gloss doesn’t fit my truth.
I think you’ve noticed — someone may see destruction in something, while someone else sees the plot of their own personal film.
I love objects and processes with history — things that hold within them many days, many events that we will never witness, but which allow us to understand what kind of experience occurred before we met it with our eyes.
I don’t strive to hide what lies on the surface behind perfection. Often, through polishing, we abandon our true selves.
But my story is about an honest and difficult conversation — with myself and with the viewer.
What I do on the canvas is a reflection of my inner observer — and they never tried to close their eyes to what’s happening inside, or what has already passed. It’s important to me that a visually beautiful painting also carries the imprints of the process.
