"Blue-throated barbet" Fine Art Print

Born in Russia, and now based in London, Alfia Koral is a contemporary oil painter whose practice combines classical painting traditions with an analytical, research-driven approach to the medium itself.

Her artistic education began in childhood at a formal art school and continued through academic studies in drawing and painting. Alongside her artistic training, she qualified as a telecommunications engineer, a background that continues to inform her analytical approach to painting. She later studied art history and contemporary painting at the HSE Art and Design School in Moscow while independently pursuing an ongoing study of traditional Old Masters oil painting techniques through specialist workshops, masterclasses, technical literature and sustained studio practice. This combination of academic training, independent research and analytical thinking continues to shape her artistic practice.

For Alfia, a painting is never simply an image on a surface. She thinks of it as a layered structure in which colour, light and matter interact across successive strata of paint. Whether working with transparent glazes, dense impasto or expressive palette-knife passages, she builds each work upon an underlying chromatic foundation that continues to influence the final image through optical interaction, texture and partially revealed layers.

Oil paint became her chosen medium because of its exceptional capacity for complexity. Its transparency, opacity, depth and slow working process allow her to investigate how colour evolves through layering and how paint can recreate the physical behaviour of different materials, the sensation of depth and the experience of light.

Her paintings explore a wide range of subjects, from still life and landscape to architecture, but they are united by the same inquiry: how can the internal construction of a painting deepen our perception of the visible world? Whether studying the translucent structure of fruit, the geometry of Mediterranean architecture or the atmosphere of a landscape, each series becomes an investigation into the relationship between material, space and perception.

Her work is held in private collections internationally, and she continues to collaborate with galleries and online art platforms worldwide.