Ilya Volykhine

“I’m an artist and doing what I’m meant to be doing: I believe that art can be defined as line and form coming through the hand – the head, and even the heart, somehow have to get out of the way.”

A unique set of textural renderings, Ilya Volykhine's paintings are joyful narratives of his town. Born in Ust Labinsk, Russia, Ilya is now a citizen of New Zealand and Australia. Throughout his years of work, he has won an excellent reputation in the international art world. Ilya has won numerous awards and vital nominations while being a finalist in the 2016 Adam Portraiture Award and Walker & Hall Art Awards. His awards list includes the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Jacaranda Drawing Prize, the Imago Mundi New Zealand Collection, and the Blake Prize for Religious Art. Ilya has exhibited worldwide and is part of a myriad of residencies. Moreover, his works found space in public, private, and corporate collections worldwide.

Ilya's paintings or mix-media works are darkly comic or satirical. Ilya's paintings confidently capture realistic human behavior, unfolding diverse leaves of familiar stories and sources of inspiration from movies, cult icons, literature, music, and commercial media. Filling up the negative and positive spaces of the painting, the brush strokes are aggressive and rigorous, while his figures are elongated or distorted. He works in collage, drawing, and painting.  

Ilya Volykhine lives and works in Devonport, Auckland.