Zhanna Tsytsyn

Zhanna Tsytsyn’s work exists at the intersection of personal history, myth, and the natural world. Born in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, and raised between her father’s Russian homeland and her mother’s roots in Kobuleti, Georgia, she immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. Her paintings are shaped by this layered, multicultural experience—a life lived between places, languages, and identities.

This sense of in-betweenness, of belonging everywhere and nowhere, has attuned Tsytsyn to questions of identity, displacement, and the subtle ways environment shapes consciousness. Her work is both autobiographical and allegorical, forming a visual language that bridges personal memory with collective themes such as womanhood, ecology, religious trauma, and the search for spiritual and emotional autonomy.

Working primarily in oil paint, earth pigments, and foraged plant materials, Tsytsyn’s practice is intuitive and tactile. Each piece emerges through an organic process guided by memory, texture, light, and materials gathered from the land. Figures dissolve into landscapes, symbols surface and fade, and the human and natural worlds hold equal presence. These dreamlike compositions become contemplative spaces, part myth and part memory,...

2008 - BA - Painting, Drawing and Printmaking

Portland State University, Portland, OR

2004 - The Art Institute of Portland

Select Exhibitions

2024 - "Identity Crisis" - Ethereal Reflections, Portland, OR

2024 - Anstine Gallery, Vancouver, WA

2023 - Art at the Cave Gallery, Vancouver, WA

2023 - Clark County Open Studios, WA

2023 - Portland Open Studios, OR

2023 - Solo Show - The Matters of Origins, La Casita Cultural Center, Vancouver, WA

2022 - We Are Reversal, Palazzo Pisani-Revedin "Rossini", Venice, Italy

2022 - Blind Insect Gallery, Portland, OR

2022 - La Casita Cultural Center, Vancouver, WA

2022 - Rebirth, Le Jardins Des Arts, New York, NY