Yulia Bas' powerful portraits reflect transformation, evolution, and the beauty of imperfection. In each painting, empty spaces become eloquent, as faces remain raw and details are obscured. Working in gesso, crushed paper, cork, acrylics and oils, the artist's brushwork is both lifelike and abstract, expressive in its texture and vivid in its accuracy. Of her work, Yulia states: '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.'
When starting on a work, the priming stage plays an important part for Bas as an initial physical engagement with the possibilities of a piece. She lets her body take the lead in priming what she describes as an abstract cloud of texture and materials, until she feels she has something ready to start with. Bas then reads that cloud and responds intuitively with what should rest upon it, whether a limb, facial feature, or body. Each painting is divided into two stages in this way: ambiguous, spontaneous, and gestural first, before moving to work more intellectually with a paintbrush to bring out an image.
