Pour painting has a mixed reputation for producing ‘abstract art’ for craft-focused social media posts. When left ‘as is’, pouring paint onto a canvas produces lysergic organic shapes and flows, which beyond artisanal notebook covers hold little interest on prolonged sober reflection.
Painter Nadia Ryzhakova goes further, using the resulting randomness of pour paintings to inspire her surreal additions. And like the Surrealists, she’s using the shape and flow of colour to unlock parts of her subconscious, inspiring scenic moments suggesting the imaginative games of childhood.
Watching children play make-believe, you often see them replay situations from real life, sometimes making heroes and villains, other times conjuring dreamlike situations as ways of symbolically processing real-life emotional situations. It’s all new to them, so without boundaries or logical expectations they swim in schools of fishes, complete the airborne angles of flying birds in the sky, and find friends in the woodland shapes of trees and branches.
Artistically, it’s a gambit that drifts perilously close to twee, but to her credit there is an energy and confidence in her compositions that maintains an emotional and evocative mystery. Her work reminds us of the internal reality of imaginative games—a central tenet of art.
Private View: Saturday, 15 November, from 6–8pm. Aleph Gallery, Stroud.
Aleph Contemporary presents Ciphers of Nature, a solo exhibition by Nadia Ryzhakova, 7 to 29 November 2025.
Exhibition Notes: Ciphers of Nature, a solo exhibition
The works explore hidden patterns in nature. Ryzhakova begins each painting by pouring liquid colour onto the canvas. Gravity, air and chance shape the paint. The results evoke river deltas, tree branches, cloud formations, moss textures.
She refers to the Chinese concept of Li — inherent rhythms of leaf veins, water ripples, stone crystals. The move from chaos to order is central. Once the paint dries into one fixed surface, she steps in. She does not impose structure but translates what emerges. Often children appear in these scenes, representing curiosity and the capacity to see wonder in what others might call randomness.
Each canvas is a journey from fluid formlessness to form, from abstraction to narrative. Viewers are invited to observe nature’s unseen forces and recognise in those patterns something universal and human.
Open Evening: Friday 15 November, 6–8pm. Gallery open Fridays and Saturdays 10am–4pm and other times by appointment.
Venue: Aleph Contemporary, Station Road, Stroud, GL5 3AR
Website: www.alephcontemporary.com
Artist Biography – Nadia Ryzhakova
Nadia Ryzhakova (b. 1982, USSR) is a contemporary British painter. Nadia studied Fine Art at the Stroganov Academy of Arts in Moscow, graduating with a MA in Monumental-decorative Painting in 2009. Upon moving to the UK in 2010, she earned an MA in Culture Policy and Management at the City University, London.
Initially, she gained recognition as a digital artist, which included a notable collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Museum and interview on Sky News. In 2016, Nadia returned to traditional canvas painting, winning the John Palmer Painting Competition award and receiving a feature in the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard. Most recently, in 2024, she completed the Turps Correspondence course at Turps Banana Art School.
Nadia currently resides in Stonehouse, painting in her studio at the Painswick Centre, where she explores themes of childhood and nostalgia through a blend of paint pouring and realistic figures.
Nadia’s recent works reinterpret her own childhood experiences and serve as a way to process personal traumas. Her paintings are characterised by organic streams of cellular and vacuolar shapes that seamlessly merge with realistic figures, creating a visual language that speaks to the compression of time and the process of remembering.
Artist Statement – Nadia Ryzhakova
Nadia Ryzhakova’s paintings represent organic streams of cellular and vacuolar forms, which ultimately dissolve into a biomorphic flow, where figures and background blend seamlessly. This merging and distortion of space can be seen as compressed time, suggesting a condensed, abstract remembrance that serves as a way to process personal traumas.
This background is the connective tissue between the physical world and the unseen, sometimes visible only through close examination. What appears abstract takes on vaguely familiar shapes, being on the edge of a play of the mind and the artist’s intention. Through this tissue, childhood images predominantly sprout. This transformation is the central theme in the artist’s work, where she reinterprets her own childhood experiences. The artist uses images of her children, symbolising a bridge to her younger self. This perspective returns to a view of the world where nothing is predetermined, where no rules bind, and life follows its own laws.
This unbounded, unrestricted gaze gives a sense of freedom and possibility. It encourages the viewers to look beyond their current circumstances, providing a source of hope especially in today’s complex and often challenging world.
CIPHERS OF NATURE — New Works by Nadia Ryzhakova
7–29 November 2025 | Aleph Contemporary, Stroud
Exhibition runs until 29 November 2025
Gallery Hours: Friday–Saturday, 10am–4pm (and by appointment)
Open Evening: Saturday, 15 November, 6–8pm
Aleph Contemporary,
Station Road, Stroud, GL5 3AR
www.alephcontemporary.com
Images courtesy of the artist/Aleph contemporary © Nadia Ryzhakova
Nadia Ryzhakova Website
Ex-London based reader of art and culture. LSE Masters Graduate. Arts and Culture writer since 1995 for Future Publishing, Conde Nast, Wig Magazine and Oyster. Specialist subjects include; media, philosophy, cultural aesthetics, contemporary art and French wine. When not searching for road-worn copies of eighteenth-century travelogues he can be found loitering in the inspirational uplands of art galleries throughout Europe.
