THE LIVING TRADITION
Oksana Nasisi is a New York artist working in the living tradition of the Old Masters — and a chronicler of women.
She paints only women: one subject, infinite women. Each portrait is a world rather than a likeness — a record of a woman’s inner life: desire, power, solitude, motherhood, ambition, vulnerability, and night.
Her practice is rooted in the classical disciplines of oil portraiture, silverpoint drawing, and fresco. She builds each painting through luminous layers of glaze, using archival materials selected for permanence.
Nasisi creates heirloom portraits: paintings conceived not simply as likenesses, but as part of a family’s visual legacy — works to be lived with, preserved, and passed from one generation to the next. Her large-scale portraits place contemporary women within sumptuous interiors, surrounded by flowers, art, and objects of beauty.
Drawing on the elegance and visual language of the Belle Époque, she explores the enduring tradition of the grand portrait and its place in contemporary life. Based in New York, Nasisi accepts a limited number of portrait commissions each year.
She paints only women: one subject, infinite women. Each portrait is a world rather than a likeness — a record of a woman’s inner life: desire, power, solitude, motherhood, ambition, vulnerability, and night.
Her practice is rooted in the classical disciplines of oil portraiture, silverpoint drawing, and fresco. She builds each painting through luminous layers of glaze, using archival materials selected for permanence.
Nasisi creates heirloom portraits: paintings conceived not simply as likenesses, but as part of a family’s visual legacy — works to be lived with, preserved, and passed from one generation to the next. Her large-scale portraits place contemporary women within sumptuous interiors, surrounded by flowers, art, and objects of beauty.
Drawing on the elegance and visual language of the Belle Époque, she explores the enduring tradition of the grand portrait and its place in contemporary life. Based in New York, Nasisi accepts a limited number of portrait commissions each year.
