YELYZAVETA
KRYLOVA
art portfolio
krulovaliza12@gmail.com
“Go Gather Bones” series
“Monotony” exhibition 08.08.2024
“Love Letter” exhibition 29.05.2024
Other works
I’m Yelyzaveta Krylova, a 22-year-old Ukrainian artist currently based in Hamburg, Germany. My primary medium is painting, through which I explore personal themes using a symbolic visual language. Symbolism is not just a component of my work—it is its foundation. Every image, colour, and narrative element I use is a reflection of inner experiences and thoughts translated into visual form.
For me, art is a tool of self-reflection and emotional archaeology. Each decision—whether thematic or technical—is an act of introspection. I translate abstract concepts into colour and form, building a visual dialogue between the outer world and my inner life. The themes I gravitate toward—love, personal growth, philosophical inquiry, inner discoveries, and the nature of being—are deeply intimate. Each painting becomes a vessel of these explorations, layered with symbols and subtle references.
My creative process is organic and evolving. I often begin with a simple idea or feeling and allow the work to unfold intuitively. As I paint, I collect more details—like a child gathering treasures—allowing the image to grow beyond its initial intention into something richer and more layered.
Visually, I’m drawn to semi-monochromatic palettes and the use of bright, pure colours. I often work with sheer layers and delicate brushstrokes, allowing each layer to interact and breathe through the next.
In essence, my art is a quiet, symbolic language—a way to feel, to question, to remember, and to understand.
“Go Gather Bones” series
A folk Mexican story tells of an old woman who lives alone in the desert, gathering the bones of dead wolves. Patiently, she searches until she finds every last piece of a skeleton. Then, back in her cave, near the warmth of a fire, she lays the bones out and sings a sacred song. As her voice rises, the bones begin to flesh out. The wolf takes form, awakens, and with a breath of life, runs howling back into the wild.
The opening painting in this series draws directly from this myth, setting the tone and spiritual core of the entire body of work.
Here, bone gathering becomes a metaphor: a personal, intuitive process of retrieving the lost, silenced, or fragmented parts of the self. It speaks to the journey of becoming whole—of remembering what has been forgotten or taken. Each painting is a bone, a sacred fragment of identity, longing, and truth. Together, they form a visual invocation, a reclamation of the wild self.
This series explores femininity, self-perception, and the deep, cyclical nature of inner transformation. Through layered symbolism—animals, water, the Moon, Tarot archetypes, and dreamlike landscapes—it traces the contours of emotional memory and ancestral intuition. The imagery speaks in a language older than words: visceral, mysterious, and feminine.
Each piece is both a mirror and a ritual—an offering to the process of returning to oneself. Each paintings is a bone of who I am.
"Go Gather Bones"
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"Go Gather Bones" *
Available for purchase
“Go Gather Bones”
100x120 cm, acrylics on canvas
2024
In this painting, the wolf emerges in visceral reds and ethereal blues, embodying the essence of La Loba, the mythic Bone Woman who gathers the lost and sings life back into forgotten souls. The layered floral motifs whisper of memory, cycles, and the wild beauty woven through decay and rebirth. The wolf, mid-transformation, becomes both creature and symbol—a guardian of instinct, a bearer of forgotten truths. The contrast between the red of blood, passion, and the blue of silence and soul suggests the liminal space where life is rekindled. This is not just a wolf—it is the howl of the wild feminine returning to wholeness.
"Tidal"
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"Tidal" *
Available for purchase
“Tidal”
133x79 cm, acrylics on canvas
2024
In this painting, water flows as a sacred symbol of the feminine, mirroring the cycles of the moon and the rhythms of the body. It becomes a metaphorical womb—holding, dissolving, and reshaping. The figure, partially submerged, evokes surrender to something ancient and primal, as if returning to the source. Water, with its tidal pull and emotional depth, speaks to the mystique of feminine wisdom, emotional intuition, and inner transformation. Just as the moon influences the tides, so too does it guide the unseen movements within the self—menstrual cycles, dreams, grief, and rebirth. Here, water is not only a backdrop but a living force: cleansing, concealing, and calling us home to our deepest knowing.
“White Winged Dove” /I’m walking the streets in the way not to scare the pigeons
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“White Winged Dove” /I’m walking the streets in the way not to scare the pigeons *
Available for purchase
“White Winged Dove” / I’m moving the streets in the way not to scare the pigeons
50x60 cm, acrylics on canvas
2024
Pigeons are perceived as filthy, which is human’s fault, a result of abandonment. With their lovely nature, swan-like monogamy, they symbolise tenderness, innocence and love. The point of the painting is a clean monochrome appearance as a way of representing one of the feminine archetypes - The Maiden
Represents innocence, tenderness, purity, love; sensitiveness and kindness wrongly mistaken for weakness.
“Self Portrait Against Red Wallpaper”
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“Self Portrait Against Red Wallpaper” *
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“Self Portrait Against Red Wallpaper”
120x180 cm, acrylics on canvas
2025
The name is taken from the poem by Richard Siken.
This piece is rich with symbolism, strength, and self-mythologizing—a compelling blend of classical reference, personal narrative, and layered femininity. A visual litany—a reclamation of voice, body, and myth. The figure, reclining with regal composure, recalls Cleopatra in Waterhouse’s vision, but here she claims the throne not through seduction or tragedy, but through self-awareness and sovereignty. Surrounded by blooming irises—symbols of wisdom, hope, and spiritual clarity—she sits rooted in her own becoming.
The presence of the pomegranate, long associated with Persephone, speaks to cycles of descent and return, not as a tale of loss, but as a testament to choice and transformation. To consume the seeds is not to fall, but to awaken—to remember that every fragment of pain and power is part of the greater whole. Each seed, like each brushstroke, tells a story of growth through shadow.
Swirling smoke, blooming petals, and vibrant reds and purples infuse the scene with heat, sensuality, and sacred femininity. This is not a passive portrait. It is a declaration: of survival, of authorship, of a woman not waiting to be rescued, but writing her own myth in flesh and fire.
“La Mariposa”
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“La Mariposa” *
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“La Mariposa”
120x90 cm, acrylics on canvas
2025
La Mariposa / Butterfly in folklore represents transformation, rebirth and a connection to the spirit world. The journey from one state to another. Shear, unfinished looking brush strokes translate this idea as well. The mix of warm and cool tones, that looks a bit out of place in some parts, depicts the search for one’s ultimate form.
monotony
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monotony *
Monotony is an exploration of repetition as both burden and ritual—an intimate dive into the quiet weight of recurrence. Each piece in this series is a visual meditation on themes like madness, devotion, obsession, and presence, where repetition becomes a mirror reflecting the complexities of existence.
Rather than offering resolution, the works invite viewers to confront and question the patterns embedded in their own routines, habits, and inner lives. Monotony challenges the notion that repetition is void of meaning, proposing instead that it holds infinite nuance—sometimes suffocating, sometimes sacred.
Together, the works form a psychological landscape, where monotony is not a lack, but a language.
The exhibition Monotony was presented at MUMA Gallery in Hamburg on August 8th, 2024.
Love Letter
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Love Letter *
“Love Letter” exhibition in Lichtmeß - Kino, Hamburg, 29.05.2024
"If I"m Butter, Then He's a Hot Knife"
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"If I"m Butter, Then He's a Hot Knife" *
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“If I’m Butter, Then He’s a Hot Knife”
60x80 cm, acrylics on canvas
2022
The painting captures the intensity of emotional surrender and desire. Through abstract forms and visceral colors, the painting explores vulnerability, power, and the consuming nature of intimacy. It speaks to the fine line between tenderness and destruction in relationships.
"Nothing Gold Can Stay"
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"Nothing Gold Can Stay" *
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“Nothing Gold Can Stay”
50x70 cm, acrylics on canvas
2022
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” is a dreamlike elegy to fleeting beauty, disillusionment, and quiet transcendence. Inspired by a haunting dream and echoing both Robert Frost’s poem and Lana Del Rey’s melancholy glamour, the painting captures a moment suspended between romantic ideal and emotional erasure.
The painting speaks of silent heartbreak in golden cages, of love that looks perfect but leaves you invisible. In the end, she becomes air—not gone, but changed—freed from the weight of not being felt. Like gold in the morning light, her presence was brief, radiant, and never meant to stay.
Backwaters Mermaid / Gogolesque
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Backwaters Mermaid / Gogolesque *
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“Backwaters Mermaid ‘ Gogolesque”
60x50 cm, acrylics on canvas
2023
The title draws from two worlds: the watery enchantment of a backwaters siren and the strange, grotesque soul of Gogol’s narratives. There’s something uncanny about her presence—she is not the glamorous mermaid of fairytales, but something more raw, feral, and sorrowful.
This painting captures the moment where beauty and eeriness coexist. She might be a spirit of longing or madness, a relic of rural legends or a reflection of a fractured self. “Backwaters Mermaid / Gogolesque” invites the viewer to enter a realm where feminine mystique, isolation, and otherworldly grief blur into a dream soaked in moss and memory.
"The Woman Destroyed"
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"The Woman Destroyed" *
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“The Woman Destroyed”
50x70 cm, acrylics on canvas
2023
Drawing its title from Simone de Beauvoir’s novel, the painting mirrors themes of inner collapse, alienation, and the quiet devastation.
The figure at the center is based on the anatomical Venus—an object once meant for scientific study, yet shaped to be aesthetically seductive, eternally passive, and perpetually exposed.
This painting does not ask for pity—it bleeds agency, rage, and grief. It reflects on the cultural construction of “woman” as something to be known, dissected, and destroyed. But beneath the soft features and open chest lies a powerful, silent resistance—a presence that cannot be fully erased.
A haunting tribute to the woman turned symbol, and the symbol turned into silence.
"The Sun"
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"The Sun" *
In private collection
“The Sun”
60x80, acrylics on canvas
2024
A portrait of someone, who once I loved.
"Under The Bridge"
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"Under The Bridge" *
In private collection
“Under The Bridge”
30x40 cm, acrylics on canvas
2023
Painting as a portrait of longing at its most silent and raw.
The title evokes a place of solitude, a space where emotions collect like water, slow and heavy.
The brushstrokes feel like echoes, and the surrounding color like the hum of a feeling that refuses to leave.
This painting becomes a quiet ritual of missing—someone, something, or maybe even a version of oneself.
All the prices are available upon request via e-mail