Milana Wonke

My practice is driven by world building. Through painting, drawing, and printmaking I build surreal narrative spaces that feel cinematic, psychologically dense and slightly unreal. I am strongly influenced by film and the way it can communicate a story through atmosphere, symbolism, and tension rather than direct explanation. Because of this, I often imagine and think of my paintings as storyboards – fragments of a larger world that continues to develop through sketches, studies, and reworking – that ultimately are there to service a story.

My Russian heritage is a key influence within my work. I draw inspiration from childhood folklore, myth, and the visual language of storytelling, as well as my family’s history. I am interested in how personal memory can merge with collective history, and how narratives can hold both intimacy and unease. My work often explores motifs of power, surveillance, politics, and control, using surreal imagery to reflect on systems that shape behaviour and identity.

I mainly work in oil paint, using layering, scraping back, and rebuilding as a way to develop depth over time. I also work on velvet, where darkness and texture allow figures to emerge gradually from shadow. Recently I have been experimenting with mixed media, including gouache for its opacity and saturated colour, and ink for its intensity and permanence. I also work with etching, which supports my interest in repetition, line, and narrative detail. Scale is important to my practice, and I have begun physically altering works by cutting into paintings and reassembling them, creating new openings, interruptions, and shifts in narrative.