Meraki

We are delighted to welcome Eugenie Vronskaya back to the gallery with her solo exhibition, Meraki. After the success of her work in last year’s group exhibition, Vronskaya returns with a deeply personal body of work that reflects the true meaning of Meraki — a Modern Greek word describing the act of creating with passion and soul. Living and working between London and the Highlands of Scotland, Vronskaya’s practice combines the ever-present connection to nature and the poetic sensibility; icon painting traditions with a deeply embodied approach, using layered, translucent forms to express spiritual intimacy.

Vronskaya went on to make history as the first Russian student to attend the MA programme at the Royal College of Art, marking the beginning of an extraordinary international career. Her work is held in major public and private collections worldwide, including Tate Britain, the V&A, the Pushkin Museum, and the Tretyakov Gallery, and has been repeatedly selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

In Meraki, painting becomes a process of devotion, a labour of love, built through time and lived experience.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Meraki

μεράκι Greek

Putting a piece of your soul into your work

Some feelings and experiences resist explanation; they cannot take the form of words. Language has its limitations. That is why we have found other ways to express our inner worlds. We foolishly believe that everything can be explained in words, yet language is only a system of use, shaped by its own rules and laws.

Painting can never be fully explained. Philip Guston refers to the mysterious process of painting and says that he never wants to understand it, as an artist he never wants to know. This resonates deeply with me.

The meaning of the word mystery comes from the Greek mysterion, meaning “secret rite,” and myein, meaning “to close the eyes and mouth.” Mystery refers to something that should not be revealed or solved like a puzzle, but rather experienced,-something one is initiated into. The root of the word points to silence, to closed lips and closed eyes: not seeing, not revealing. Mystery is not meant to be explained.

This is how I feel about painting.

There is something sacred and undeniably mysterious about it. It is like a secret alchemy: when all elements come together under the right conditions, a miracle takes place, and a canvas covered in paint transforms into a painting. It is the most magical experience—one that is worth hours, days, weeks, months, even years of showing up in the studio and doing the daily work. That work can be described, explained, analyzed, or demonstrated, but painting itself can never truly be explained.

What is my painting about? Can a painting even be about something? If Morandi painted bottles and jugs all his life, does that mean his paintings were about those objects? Of course not. They are about timelessness, loneliness, boredom, love, death—about the entire universe, condensed into a carefully arranged cluster of bottles on a table.

I hold a strange notion: there is no past or future but only now and my paintings already exist somewhere in the unseen. When I paint, I slowly recall them, bringing them into existence . I do not feel in control of what emerges on the canvas. There is always a starting point, and then the painting takes me through multiple transformations. I never know what will arrive in the end, but I hope to recognise it when it is fully there, in front of me.

All I know is that I have to be completely honest and sincere, I have to summon my absolute best, and give the work all the love I hold, along with a piece of my soul. These are my sacred ingredients, this is Meraki.