Artists to Collect #1: Katya Frolova — Contained Vitality.

Meet the first emerging artist who made our hearts tremble this week:

Katya Frolova.

Nocturnal animals, oil on canvas, 2025

Based in Riga, Frolova works primarily with oil painting.

What we see in Katya Frolova’s work is colour fighting against form, as if an enormous amount of energy has been trapped inside the body. An energy of vitality, sexuality, and emotional intensity, but at the same time of fear, uncertainty, and vulnerability. Everything that makes us feel alive.

But it seems as though this energy is afraid of itself. It has already outgrown its own bodily boundaries, yet still cannot break outside to experience itself beyond inner confinement.

That is why, in her paintings, everything seems to vibrate and radiate from a place of internal pressure and emotional claustrophobia. It simply does not have enough space within.

This inner tension is exhausting. The energy begins consuming itself, burning through the form that makes physical presence and action impossible.

And that is what makes Frolova’s work feel so powerful, it becomes a visual reminder: strong inner energy must find liberation — or it turns against itself. Creation or destruction.

What do you choose?

Mermaid, oil on canvas, 2025

Untitled, oil on canvas, 2025

Forget-me-not, oil on canvas, 2025

Marie, oil on canvas, 2025