About Katerina
Katerina Gordeeva is a Ukrainian-born artist based in Cancún, Mexico.
For more than two decades, she worked as an illustrator and concept artist, creating images for games and other visual projects. Over time, she became increasingly interested in a different kind of image-making - one that did not begin with a story, character, or predetermined idea.
Her move into abstract painting grew alongside a more personal shift in her life. Living away from her country of origin and moving between languages has made her increasingly aware of how much can be communicated without words. Painting became a way to explore that space: how an inner state can become visible, felt, and shared without needing to be explained.
Today, Katerina works intuitively across canvas and silk. She is drawn to the openness of the process, where an initial feeling can change through color, movement, material, and time. Silk, with its transparency and sensitivity to light, has become an important part of this exploration.
Her work is ultimately rooted in a simple question: how can something that begins inside us become present outside us, and perhaps meet someone else there?
Artist Statement
I fell in love with abstract painting as a way of turning what I feel into atmosphere.
My favorite part is when the process begins to develop its own voice and a kind of interplay starts between us. This way of working keeps me awake and present to everything that happens as the painting unfolds.
I often begin with a feeling or a state, but I let the process transform the initial idea. I don't hold on to it too tightly. It is more of an impulse than a destination.
It is difficult to say what result I am looking for. Each painting is, in some way, a discovery for me too.
There is a tension in not knowing what comes next that keeps me attentive to the process. I value the freedom of not having to tell someone what to see or what to feel. What I value in abstraction is its ability to create a small moment before naming, knowing, or comparing - a moment that feels close to simply being present.
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