Tania Rivilis

Self observation through the phone camera and mirror.

Continuing this little love letter to my favorite models and muses, I want you to really meet them, not just skim past their faces.
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This beautiful mustachioed dandy you’ve probably seen a dozen times already is Ruslan 🥰. He lives in London, where he lets the city savor not only his glorious mustache but his razor-sharp style, like he’s walking out of a painting and back into one every day. We met through my artist friend Yulia 🥰🫶🏽
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Ruslan doesn’t belong to my canvases alone; he keeps slipping into other artists’ work too, because honestly, how could he not—his look is pure gold. He’s kind, magnetic, effortlessly charming, and every time I paint him it feels like the room gets a little more charged. Swipe through the slides and you’ll see a few of the moments we’ve trapped him on canvas.
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Btw ⭕️ In this portrait, Vincent van Gogh’s *Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat (obverse: The Potato Peeler)* serves as both spark and origin. I wanted to carry over not only the summer palette and the sweeping, unrestrained brushstrokes that seem to follow the form rather than simply cover it, but also the pensive gaze, the faint melancholy, and the sense of a body slightly withdrawn from the surrounding noise and movement.
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Beneath this painting lies an earlier, unsuccessful attempt—a reworked image that never quite resolved itself. I like feeling its presence under the surface, this “error” that, much like in the spirit of kintsugi, becomes not a defect but a unique trace of the process, a fracture that quietly enriches the life of the portrait.
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