Evolving Abstractions: Colorful Exploration Painting

Maria Lankina is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans photography, painting, drawing, and myth-informed visual systems. Her transition into fine art began with a stark body of black-and-white photographic work—raw, direct, and emotionally charged. These early images revealed a desire not just to document, but to embody: to turn gesture, rupture, and memory into living surfaces. Over time, she moved beyond the lens. Beginning with gestural abstract paintings and experimental mixed-media works that layered original fashion photography with gel transfers, gold pigment, and neon acrylics, Lankina developed a hybrid language of material and signal. These early paintings formed the groundwork for her later series—Make Me Pure, Just Not Yet, Brutalist Organic, and the AI-generated Deities, created using her own visual archives as prompts. Her current practice includes UV-reactive abstraction, hand-drawn glyphic systems, and AI-infused image relics. Often composed in altered states, Lankina’s pieces are entirely hand-built—without rulers or templates—and explore what she calls mythohuman relics: works that sit between sacred language, psychic transmission, and biological memory. Her work has appeared at Art Basel Miami (Red Dot and satellite fairs), in Reebok and fashion campaigns, and on TV sets such as Kourtney & Kim Take Miami. She has collaborated with artists and producers across music, fashion, and editorial, including work featured in the Love Faces video by Trey Songz. She currently lives and works in Miami.