Andjana Pachkova: Artist Statement & Bio

My art practice is centered around discovering the ephemeral and the spiritual in painting. My work tends to be a meditation on identity taken outside of its original context through a repeated process of contextualization and recontextualization, both willing and forced. In my practice, I re-balance the harmony of being in the questions asked: “Who are we?” “Who Am I?” and “How do I belong, both to culture and country?” It is through the exploration of places, land, both lived in and imagined, that I can glimpse at an answer. The closer I get to the places of personal significance, the more defined and prolonged is the glimpse, sometimes it is enough to whisk the painting from the ephemeral currents of ideas and pin it down to a flat surface. Akin to the Russian and German Romantic painters and writers, I often gaze toward the expanse of the horizon to understand where we are coming from and possibly glimpse as to where we may be going. All throughout the search I am confronted by the three guards of my personal truth - nostalgia, ledsomeness and keir. In the end the search keeps going, hunting after the universal in the context of particular, with dual aids of powerful tools - memory and intuition.

Andjana Pachkova

Born in Ukraine, Andjana Pachkova comes from a traditional Russian art tutoring background. Following the political shifts of Perestroika, she moved to Moscow, where she began formal art training through classes at the Stroganov Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts. Alongside this, she pursued legal studies and went on to complete a Bachelor of Law at Moscow International University in 1998.

In 1997, Pachkova was awarded the prestigious Davis Fellowship, which enabled her to move to the United States for postgraduate study. She earned a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Dartmouth College in 2000—where she also undertook art courses—followed by a Master of Law from Harvard University in 2001. During this period, she continued to deepen her artistic practice, also taking courses at New York University (NYU). Her work grew out of a deep interest in human relationships to place and landscape, particularly the subtle psychological transformations that occur as people move through and between environments.

After relocating to Australia in 2013, Andjana formalised her art training by completing a Diploma of Visual Arts at Northbridge Visual Art School in 2014. She has since exhibited regularly in Sydney, presenting four solo exhibitions with Stanley Street Gallery. Her practice has been enriched through mentorship and study with notable Australian artists including Idris Murphy, Jo Bertini, Brandt Lewis, Denis Clarke, and Tony Tozer.

Andjana Pachkova’s work is held in private collections across the United States—including the Harvard Law faculty in Cambridge, Massachusetts—as well as in Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Finland, Israel, and Lebanon.

Artist portrait by Jessica Maurer

Andjana Pachkova: CV July, 2025 Download