Olena Sem Geneva

“I paint the parts of us we are taught to hide.”

I am Olena Sem, a Ukrainian-born contemporary figurative painter based in Geneva, Switzerland. My work is drawn to people when they stop trying to be acceptable: the awkward gesture, the imperfect body, the peculiarities we disguise and the vulnerability of being completely oneself.

I want to find beauty in the unconventional and look at imperfection with tenderness rather than judgment. Rather than pursuing likeness, I amplify what first attracts me to a figure: gesture, presence, tension or vulnerability. Bodies distort and partially dissolve; silhouettes break; invented landscapes, drapery and colour become part of their psychological world.

My paintings borrow the theatrical composition and drama of historical painting, but I loosen that structure through expressive brushwork, broken edges and accident. Working predominantly in oil, I move between translucent washes and dense, physical passages of paint.