ValyaNarts is a digital artist who paints in a dark, semi-realist style close to Pre-Raphaelite and Impressionist painting. She depicts figures at moments of extreme emotion — triumph, disaster, tension or stillness — drawing on techniques from the Old Masters to address contemporary problems.
The name ValyaNarts combines her first name, Valya, with a shortened form of her surname, Nartsissova. She attended a watercolor art class in school and later graduated from an institute of architecture, which gave her some grounding in art. Real progress came only through self-directed study, after she left an office job to pursue painting full time.
She began releasing digital art on the Singular platform in May 2022, starting with a collection titled The Rebellious Pigeon. Having been a political activist before immigrating, she has said she wanted her art to carry that same voice. Her process starts with an idea, which she works out first in a sepia sketch. Composition, light and pose are then set to serve that idea before she renders the final piece. Among the artists she credits for teaching her digital painting are Sinix, Stan Prokopenko, Loish and Ricco Bucci, whose online lessons she has described as easy, short and funny.
