''I approach painting as both a visual and conceptual language; a site where ideas materialize through color, texture, and gesture. Each work begins with a concept that determines its form, medium, and emotional resonance. My practice is guided not by the pursuit of a signature style, but by an ongoing dialogue between thought and process. Each series develops its own visual identity, shaped by the idea at its core. This concept-based approach allows for a fluid exploration of themes while maintaining a coherent and rigorous framework that continually redefines what painting can be.
Informed by Russian, African, and European cultural influences, my work engages with questions of memory, belonging, and cultural inheritance. The paintings operate as spaces of intersection, where histories overlap, where presence and absence coexist, and where material becomes a vessel for meaning. Through these layered investigations, painting becomes both an act of inquiry and a form of reflection, navigating the shifting relationships between identity, tradition, and personal experience.
Ultimately, my practice evolves in dialogue with life itself, responsive to change, open to transformation, and grounded in the belief that ideas and form must move together toward new possibilities of expression.''
Nadia Kissel’s artistic journey began in Russia, where she trained from the age of fourteen at the Ryazan College of Art and later at the Leningrad Academy. Grounded in the classical traditions of drawing and composition, her practice has since evolved across cultures and continents. A move to Kenya marked a transformative chapter, immersing her in the vibrant textures of African life and expanding her visual language through bold colour and dynamic contrasts. Later, in the United Kingdom, Kissel’s work became increasingly concept-driven, exploring themes of identity, belonging, and displacement through series such as Stripped, Bags and Boxed, and Post Card From….Kissel completed her MFA with distinction at Birmingham City University in 2016, receiving first prize for Stripped, later exhibited at the 2019 Venice Biennale (Personal Structures: Identities, European Cultural Centre).
Working through a series-based, conceptually rigorous approach to painting, Kissel continues to explore memory, material, and shifting notions of identity. Her work is held in private and public collections internationally. For Kissel, art remains an evolving conversation between past and present, self and place, a way of mapping experience through the language of form and idea.
