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Katia Lifshin (b.1993), is a Ukraine-born artist. In her practice, nature is a recurring theme and point of reference. Unconventional natural phenomena – such as bioluminescence or spiral tree trunks – find their way into her surrealist world, which is both inspired by everyday life as well as psychedelic experiences. The works also express a constant shift between light and darkness as an artistic interpretation of constantly-shifting emotional states. Lifshin’s work oscillates between the human and the non-human, connecting human experiences and their natural environments. Her feminine figures search their ways in the world, using their physical and mental flexibility to break boundaries and defy exterior and interior limitations.
Katia has a solo show coming up in September, at ARTEMIN Gallery.
Hi Katia! It’s a pleasure to sit down with you. First question I always ask—what does a regular day look like for you?
Katia: Lately, I’ve been waking up early, around 7 or 8. First thing I do is tend to my plants while sipping coffee, of course. By 10, I put on music and start painting. I usually paint for about twelve hours, give or take, with two or three breaks scattered throughout. Sometimes I sneak off for a midday swim at the beach. My studio’s at home, and I love that, I enjoy solitude. Evenings are quiet. Sometimes I’ll work out, but most of the time I’m just painting.
What kind of kid were you? What did you enjoy doing growing up?
Katia: I attended rhythmic gymnastics classes from the age of 5-11. After I quit, I was outside a lot, riding my bike, playing with my Bratz dolls, I used to sew clothes for them! I loved drawing as a teen. I sketched every day and played a lot of Sims 2. In high school, I majored in film and spent most nights watching films on my laptop. I loved reading too. I used to hang out a lot with two of my friends, who today I call family.
When did you start painting, and when did it start to feel serious for you?
Katia: The first time I painted with oil paints was at 12. My grandma gave me some old, half-used paint tubes, and I remember doing this painting of my sister and me sitting between two bushes. I touched the paint with my hands, I was totally mesmerized by the texture and smell, and the fact that it didn’t dry for days! I didn’t return to oils until college, though.
But honestly, I always took it seriously. Art wasn’t a hobby. I was constantly drawing with pencils and pastels. I also took private drawing lessons with a Russian teacher who taught me about drawing basics, shading, and watercolors.
Your paintings often evoke feelings of isolation, vulnerability, and wonder. Do these emotions reflect your own experiences growing up or navigating new places?
Katia: They do, but they also tap into something broader, more universal. My work explores the shifting landscapes of the mind, the internal journeys, decisions, and turning points that shape who we are. It’s about the movement within, the balance between feeling small in the universe and still evolving.
Your paintings are filled with recurring motifs—labyrinths, moonlight, scissors, surreal vegetation. What personal or symbolic meanings do these hold for you?
Katia: Yes, they’re part of a personal vocabulary I’m developing. Motifs like plants, light and darkness, night, paths, spirals, play with perspective and bioluminescence recur throughout my work. These motifs are tools to explore ideas of growth, transformation, and the hidden forces shaping our inner worlds.
Labyrinths and the overall play with perspective represent inner space, the tangled architecture of thought and emotion. Spirals, infinite paths, they suggest internal movement, like a loop you’re always walking.
Nature is a recurring metaphor. It can be nurturing or confining, beautiful or threatening. The scissors are about fear and restriction, but also agency: cutting, shaping, choosing. The imagery shifts depending on the emotion I’m working through.
What’s your relationship to nature and plants?
Katia: It’s a big part of my life. No matter how my work evolves, I always return to the theme of connection with nature. There’s awe in staring at a flower or gazing at stars, a reminder of universal wonder.
And the various surreal scenes in your work—what’s the story behind them, how do you come up with them?
Katia: A lot of my ideas emerge just before sleep! In that hazy in-between state where reality blurs and thoughts become strange and vivid. That’s when the best ideas arrive, when nothing’s filtered. Then I actually make myself get out of bed and sketch the idea!
There’s often an eerie calm or dreamlike tension in your work—are these environments meant to soothe, unsettle, or both?
Katia: Definitely both. I’m drawn to the tension between light and darkness, emotional friction and beauty existing in the same space. My work is about that inner struggle: how awe and fear can live side by side. It’s what makes the smallest things, like a flower or the sky, feel enormous. That contrast is the drive behind many of my works.
The figures in your paintings are often young and feminine. Are they representations of you? Or who are they?
Katia: They’re both reflections of myself and independent beings. Many carry pieces of my experience, but I also imagine them as idealized versions capable of movements beyond the physical body. They spiral and stretch, becoming part of their surroundings, like dancers. Over time, they’ve taken on their own lives, they have their ways of moving.
How much of your work is rooted in the subconscious? Do dreams or internal visions guide your creative decisions?
Katia: A lot. Dreams are a huge influence, many ideas come from dreams, or right before i fall asleep. I have dreams that stick with me for years! whole directions in my work, series, new ideas, come from dreams I had. It’s amazing, I’m lucky I can paint them. I’ve also had some psychedelic experiences that completely reoriented how I see. They opened new ways of perceiving. That definitely comes through in my work.
There’s a constant play between safety and entrapment in your work. Do you see your dreamlike spaces as utopias, prisons—or both?
Katia: Both. My show “Pathways” at Galerie Kandlhofer back in September 2024 explored exactly that, I created a series of works loosely inspired by MC Escher’s impossible spaces, I had a lot of fun making these works, it was really challenging painting them – especially one titled ‘Lost And Found’ where I painted a four directional maze.
The spaces I painted are essentially symbols of the landscapes of the mind. We build prisons in our minds, but we also build escape hatches. In ‘Synaptic Pruning’, the girls are trimming hedges that cage them in, but the twist is, they’re the ones who shaped them. It’s about self-imposed limits, and the freedom that exists within those confines.
Can you walk me through your creative process from beginning to end result?
Katia: It always starts with a loose sketch on a random piece of paper. Once the idea feels solid enough, maybe after a few days, I refine it, and start to actually add on the details, thinking more intentionally about composition. I choose the canvas size based on the proportions and energy the piece needs.
Then I do a more detailed sketch directly on the canvas using pencil or charcoal, though it’s always changing as I work. Then I build an underpainting to map out structure and values, using thinned oils. As I start layering the oil paint, some of the original ideas shift in the process, and new ones emerge. It’s an intuitive process, you’re sort of guided by the painting. Some details come together quickly; others take many days of layering and small adjustments.
There’s usually a point where it feels like nothing’s working. Then it clicks, and from that moment on, it’s just about refining the technical side. Honestly, that’s the fun part: the final stretch.
Can you also tell me about your use of symbolism?
Katia: The symbolism in my works isn’t always planned, it’s layered. Recurring elements like plants, spirals, scissors, night, bioluminescence, they emerge because I keep returning to the same questions. Transformation, entanglement, mystery, hidden emotion, It’s like a visual code!
You work a lot with blues, greens, and nocturnal tones… How do you approach color?
Katia: My palette evolves slowly, almost cautiously. When I paint, I build from dark to light, like excavating something hidden. Approaching color feels the same way: slowly uncovering new shades, new layers of meaning to add to the visual language of my work. Lately, I’ve been introducing more light and softness. You’ll see that shift in my upcoming show at Artemin in Taiwan.
With that in mind. You have a solo presentation coming up in September with ARTEMIN Gallery, what was your inspiration behind these new bodies of work?
Katia: Flowers became a portal, symbols of endless possibility and renewal. Their variety brought me calm and gratitude. About three years ago, I dreamed of diving into a pile of soft yellow flowers, sitting inside with only my head out, watching the world from a mountain. Midway through preparing the show, I realized the feeling from the dream, the softness, the calm, the immersion, is exactly what I’m trying to capture in this new work! This solo show is about that sensation of diving into flowers, being wrapped in softness, feeling free and connected to the endless variations of nature
While we’re on the topic. Did you do any specific research for these new works?
Katia: It was intuitive. I collected hundreds of flower photographs. Even mid-painting, I’d find new ones that suddenly clicked. I was especially drawn to fluffy, alien-like flowers, things that feel surreal and dreamy. They became part of the atmosphere for my new works.
In a parallel universe—who would you be, and what would you be doing?
Katia: A tree. wait but I want to keep my hands and feet! I thought about it recently actually, I think I could have been a gardener, a filmmaker, a DJ? I would definitely do something with my hands. That’s a must.
Outside of art, what’s something you’re obsessed with right now—maybe a hobby, a show, or even a food—that keeps you grounded or inspired?
Katia: I like collecting things – fossils, seashells, sea glass, driftwood, and pieces of broken pottery I find at Sidna Ali beach. The cliffs above the beach are basically ruins of the ancient city of Apolonia, which was a major pottery hub during the Roman Empire. I’ve found pieces of oil lamps, the top part of a Roman jar, and so many handles from ceramic vases. Some still have texture or pattern! My house is full of these cool objects that were touched by the ocean.
Also, I propagate plants. Of course I do.
Lately I’ve been obsessively listening to the album Hotel Living by 1tbsp.
Can you tell me a story about a time when a connection with someone had a big impact on you?
Katia: Not the typical answer, but- my grandmother. As I got older, I started seeing how much we share: her hyper-creativity, her love for plants, the way she never sits still. She built this huge garden in the middle of an urban area, and she’s still out there, working in it-at 77! She grew up in Ukraine, surrounded by animals and nature, and lived through a lot. But she stayed strong, and kept making. That quiet determination really inspires me.
What qualities do you find most important in the people you choose to spend time with?
Katia: Emotionally sensitive people, who get my weird jokes and don’t take life too seriously.
Anybody you look up to?
Katia: David Lynch, Lisa Yuskavage, my grandma
What motivates you?
Katia: The joy of discovery, finding a new plant, a strange seashell, a new way of painting, basically learning new things that I can add to my internal library of ideas. And just the fact that I get to do what I love. I don’t take that for granted.
How would you describe a perfect day?
Katia: Waking up early. Quick swim at the beach. Then, painting all day with music playing, and at the end of the day being satisfied with what I made.
Alright Katia, I always ask these two questions at the end of an interview. The first is: What’s your favorite movie(s) and why?
Katia: So many to choose from… every film ever made by Pedro Almodóvar and David Lynch. The Truman show, The Virgin Suicides, and Forest Gump.
And what song(s) are you currently listening to the most right now?
Katia: Right now, I keep returning to “Rush (Missing Out On Me)” by 1tbsp, it feels like the perfect soundtrack for my current mood and creative flow.