Tanya Gomelskaya’s art is the kind that invites a double take. At first, her paintings seem rooted in classical portraiture and meticulous realism, but the longer you look, the more they begin to shift into something stranger, more vulnerable, and deeply psychological. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1988 and brought to the United States as a child, Gomelskaya found in art a way to navigate displacement, identity, and emotion long before she fully returned to painting as a career. Now based in Central Jersey, she creates works that feel intensely personal while still speaking to something universal, using the human body not just as a subject, but as a surface for memory, tension, fragility, and transformation.

Across her different series, Gomelskaya explores these ideas in distinct but connected ways. Her “Good Luck Series,” with its broken mirror imagery, turns reflection into something fractured and uneasy, as though identity itself has splintered. In her sculptural works, painted figures seem to push beyond the limits of the canvas, emerging into the viewer’s space in ways that feel both beautiful and unsettling.

To see more of Tanya Gomelskaya’s art, be sure to visit her website and Instagram. And while you’re scrolling through the works below, don’t forget to vote for the pieces that stood out to you the most.

More info: tanya.gallery | Instagram

#1

Epoxy sculpture and oil on panel.

Her large-scale and mixed-technique pieces continue that same emotional thread, incorporating found objects, hair, and dimensional elements that blur the line between painting and installation. What ties all of it together is her remarkable attention to skin, gesture, and expression, along with a willingness to make discomfort part of the viewing experience. The result is work that feels intimate, surreal, and impossible to ignore.