About Anna Rolskaya

Anna Rolskaya is an independent visual artist based in Lisbon, Portugal. Classically trained, she embraces an intuitive, unplanned process that seeks visual balance and quiet poetry. Working from her apartment studio in Lisbon's Príncipe Real district, Anna draws on the city's luminous light, gardens, and historic architecture. Influenced by Art Nouveau, she often turns to floral forms as an inexhaustible source for composition, fine detail, and palette. Her paintings are held in private collections worldwide, with many in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Bio

Anna Rolskaya was born in Moscow in 1985, where she received a classical fine arts education before studying Communication Design and graduating in 2007. She moved to Portugal in 2015 to complete a Master's at ESAD Matosinhos and has lived and worked in Lisbon ever since, later deepening her painting practice through a course at Central Saint Martins in London.

Her work is rooted in a physical, intuitive approach to paint — loose, layered, built from disorder toward resolution. Each canvas arrives at a composed, hierarchical surface where the assured gesture carries the full weight of everything beneath it. The recurring themes are refuge, sensation, and the search for form within chaos.

Rolskaya has exhibited across Portugal and internationally, including at Palacete Chagas in Lisbon, as well as in London and Barcelona. She has shown at the Lisbon Art Fair, Art Fair Portimão, and The Other Art Fair in London. Her work is held in private collections in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and across Europe.

Artist statement

Anna Rolskaya's paintings explore maturing, limitation, and the loss that comes with choosing who we become.
Each work begins with intention and pleasure. Rolskaya sets the color, the scale, and the orientation, then moves freely within that frame, letting forms, gestures, and colors emerge before she fully understands them. As the painting progresses, freedom becomes choice. She edits, covers, cuts, and establishes hierarchy, accepting that only some possibilities survive.
For her, this mirrors the experience of adulthood: reaching one place means leaving another behind, and becoming someone means letting go of the childish dreams we once held about who we might be.
Floral forms move through her work as shapes rather than subjects. They hold personal experiences such as doubt, fear, tenderness, resistance, and memory. Awkward, sharp, seemingly inappropriate lines often disturb the composition, and Rolskaya keeps them, recognizing them as parts of herself that belong in the work as much as its beauty does.
What she builds instead of harmony is a visual balance in which contradictions coexist. The finished painting becomes a place where difficult and unresolved things remain present while the whole holds together. This creates a form of reconciliation and closure that life itself rarely offers.

CV

Anna Rolskaya (b. 1985, Moscow). Lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal, since 2015.

Education
BA in Communication Design, Moscow, 2002–2007
 MA in Communication Design, Porto, 2015 - 2017
Online abstract painting course, Central Saint Martins, London

Art fairs
The Other Art Fair, London, March 2025
Lisbon Art Fair, June 2024
Art Fair Portimão, September 2023

Exhibition
Color as Concept, international online group exhibition, Ambrose Creatives, 5 June–20 July 2026. Work exhibited: Unfolding, Still (2026).
Solo show at charity concert by "Horizonte Musical do Tejo", Palacete Chegas, Lisbon, Portugal
Creating and holding space, group show, Bohio creative, Caldas de Rainha, Portugal, 2026
Connection studio, group show, Lisbon, Portugal, 2025
Group Exhibition, Tavira das Artes Gallery, Tavira, Portugal, 2024
Flores do Cabo, group show, Sintra, Portugal, 2023
Fragmented, group show, London, UK, 2022