Yulia Bas Russian, b. 1986

Yulia Bas (Lobanov) is an emerging Russian artist whose powerful portraits reflect transformation, evolution, and the beauty of imperfection. In each painting, empty spaces become eloquent, as faces remain unfinished and details are obscured. Yulia's brush strokes and empty spaces pose questions on identity, change, and self-doubt. Working with gesso, crushed paper, acrylics and oils, her brushwork is both lifelike and abstract, rough in its texture and vivid in its accuracy. Each detail carries her own anxieties as well as that of her subject; shadows suggesting traumas, tension, and misconceptions, the light indicating clarity, infinite possibilities, power, and peace.

For Yulia, portraiture is a direct reflection of personality – she makes connections between background texture and subconscious settings. Detailed realism coexists with sketchy, bold brush strokes and unapologetic white spots of background. Yulia's portraits capture the subjects in a specific moment, aware that they will never be the same person as in that moment ever again. Just as she will never be the same artist again. As we experience and are influenced by changes around us and inside us, our identity evolves and the shadows and light, both real and imagined, adjust too.

Born in Moscow in 1986, and currently situated in Barcelona, Yulia's eclectic artistic journey began at a very early age. From studying with a teacher dedicated to old school academicism as a child, she went on to complete a degree in interior design and architecture. Over the past decade, she has established a successful yacht design studio with her partner, relocating to Barcelona and immersing herself in this unique leviathan realm. After a decade dedicated to yacht design, Yulia felt a longing to return to the canvas once again. In many ways as an artist reborn, her work harnesses her feelings of vulnerability and her acute awareness of her shifting identity. As she undergoes a metamorphosis of self, so do her subjects through her honest, incomplete rendering.