Marina Pryiomova
- Jan 26
- 3 min read
Marina Pryiomova is a Ukrainian painter based in London and currently studying at the Royal College of Art. She often begins a canvas with the female body, then builds and covers it with new layers so earlier forms remain as faint marks under the surface. Her work looks at memory, family, and the bond between mothers and daughters, as well as her experience of living between places and languages.
Q: Your paintings begin with the female body and move toward its disappearance. How did this way of working become important to you?
A: I work between figuration and abstraction. At the core of my practice is a celebration of motherhood, the relationship between mother and daughter, continuity, and tradition. The female body in the first layer represents presence, history, and transmission through the maternal line. But disappearance is not loss—it is transformation. Fragments of female figures remain, like memories that don't vanish completely but change their form. This is about the complexity and multiplicity of our identities and souls.
Q: Working with layers, what helps you decide when a layer stays and when it changes?
A: I don't decide this rationally, but through a relationship with the time of the painting itself. Each layer is a moment that has been lived and now belongs to the past. But the past doesn't disappear, it reconfigures itself. A layer changes not because it's no longer important, but because its importance now lies in how it shapes what comes after it.
It becomes foundation, ground, memory—not an image, but the condition for a new image. The entire principle of my work is built on this.
Q: How does living between places, languages, and identities shape the decisions you make in the studio?
A: All of this is an inseparable part of my life, my identity—it is all me. It is all my experience, very diverse, multidimensional, and layered. And certainly, not only in the studio but in everyday life, decisions are made based on the accumulated experiences that came before. And this is wonderful, I don't have to choose. This makes my practice broader and more interesting.
Q: Form, color, light, and texture all play at once in your work. Which of these elements tends to guide you?
A: I believe that in my painting, everything is important, because all of these elements together form the right composition and a complete picture. Form in my work is a process, not an object. It is always in motion between recognition and abstraction, between the explicit and the implied. Through the interaction of form, light, color, and texture, a dialogue is constructed within the painting: tension or relaxation, multidimensionality and multilayering, volume or flatness.
Q: Reconstruction and deconstruction are central in your practice. What part of this process feels the most unpredictable?
A: Unpredictability is the place where my subjectivity meets the objectivity of material and time. It's the place where I lose control, and that's precisely where the work becomes truly alive. The ability to destroy previous forms and build new ones powerfully releases energy and gives freedom to thought and action. This helps me establish a completely different kind of dialogue with the painting.
Q: You move between painting, objects, and installation. What are you focusing on right now in the studio?
A: Right now I'm more focused on painting, as I'm studying at the Royal College of Art Painting programme. I consider it rational and most effective at this moment to narrow my profile of work, so that I can receive more specific advice and commentary about my work from tutors in college.
