Abyssal Collection - Abyssal Core Detail

About

Yelizaveta Parish is a mixed media artist whose work centers on depth, weight, and surface. Her paintings are built through slow, physical processes that emphasize texture, restraint, and balance. Each piece is made by hand, allowing material to accumulate, compress, and settle over time.

Formally trained and licensed in architecture, Parish brings a structural sensibility to her practice. She approaches the canvas as a constructed surface, paying close attention to proportion, edge, and shallow relief. Raised and embedded elements introduce subtle spatial shifts, creating tension between flatness and depth.

Her work is informed by reading, environment, and close observation of natural systems. The Abyssal series draws from deep ocean landscapes and the forces that shape them, pressure, darkness, and time. These works reflect an interest in what exists beyond direct visibility and how form is altered under sustained weight.

Forthcoming work moves upward and outward into river systems, rainforests, cloud forests, and fungal networks, inspired by the ideas explored in Is a River Alive? This next body of work considers flow, exchange, and interdependence across living systems. Rather than depicting specific environments, Parish responds to these influences through material behavior and process.

Across all bodies of work, her practice remains physical and human. Surfaces carry evidence of touch, adjustment, and restraint. The work invites close looking and sustained attention, offering space for stillness and reflection rather than immediate resolution.

Currently working on

The Abyssal collection is informed by deep-ocean terrain and geological formation. Through dense layering, mineral-like surfaces, and subdued tonal ranges, the work considers how pressure and time shape unseen environments. The resulting compositions suggest both sedimentation and erosion—forms emerging through restraint rather than force.

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Artist Statement

I create layered mixed media works that focus on depth, weight, and surface. Each piece is built slowly by hand through adding, compressing, and removing material until the surface feels balanced and resolved. Texture functions as structure in my work, shaping how the viewer experiences space.

My background in architecture influences how I approach composition and material. I treat the canvas as a constructed surface, paying close attention to proportion, edge, and shallow relief. Raised and embedded elements push the work beyond flatness without becoming fully sculptural.

My recent work is inspired by deep ocean environments, reading on nature and conservation, and biological structures found in the natural world. Ideas of pressure, erosion, and slow transformation guide my process. Rather than depicting these sources directly, I allow them to inform how materials behave. The finished work invites close looking and rewards quiet attention.

Current and forthcoming work is influenced by rivers, rainforests, cloud forests, and fungal networks, inspired in part by the book Is a River Alive? These environments challenge fixed boundaries between living and nonliving systems. I am drawn to their cycles of exchange, decay, and renewal, and to the way form emerges through connection rather than isolation. These ideas enter the work through layering, flow, and accumulation, shaping surfaces that feel held together by quiet, internal logic rather than overt representation.