I am TOVA – a multidisciplinary artist working across visual art, music, and poetry, bringing together academic rigor and artistic intuition. I draw on a life shaped by finance and research to explore how economic frameworks, social structures, and private inner worlds intersect.
London, United Kingdom
tova-gallery.com
INTERVIEW
How did you find your way into art – was there a specific moment or person that set you on this path?
TOVA’s journey into art began in childhood — TOVA, that’s me. From an early age, art became my way of reading existence, sensing how emotion moves through form and how structure gives shape to experience. It felt instinctive to translate life into a visual language and then return to it, as if the studio were a space where the world could be seen and understood more clearly.
In time, science entered the picture, and the two paths began to evolve side by side. Holding a PhD in Finance, I approached research as a disciplined way of investigating the world, built on rigor, method, and precision in questioning. Art opened a complementary path of inquiry, guided by intuition, imagery, and resonance. Together, these practices became twin modes of exploration in my life, each illuminating and deepening the other.
TOVA’s path was shaped gradually. Painting evolved into series; the series evolved into multimedia projects where image met voice and original music. Through that evolution, the core remained constant: in TOVA’s world, and in my world, art stays a way of studying inner life, examining relationships, and tracing the structures that shape them both.
How would you describe your artistic practice to someone encountering your work for the first time?
TOVA’s work invites you to feel first, then read. Each piece creates a structured field where emotion can be sensed before it’s defined, where color carries mood and geometry gives orientation. I want you to enter slowly and notice what draws you in, a rhythm, a tension, a fragment that feels almost tangible, letting your own memory shape what it becomes.
My practice unfolds through series, so meaning accumulates across multiple works rather than landing in a single glance. Each series develops a visual language that gradually loosens, leaving room for ambiguity and interpretation. Returning matters. A second look can reveal what was quiet the first time. A change in tone, a connection you missed, a single detail can alter the emotional temperature of the whole work.
TOVA’s work also moves between painting, screen-based installations, and live performance, allowing one idea to unfold through image, voice, and original music. Across mediums, the invitation stays consistent. Meet the work through perception and let recognition arrive in its own time.
What themes or ideas keep returning to your work, even when you don’t plan for them?
Life keeps returning as the central source in TOVA’s work. People and relationships reappear in shifting forms, followed by inner states that shape perception. I stay close to what endures beneath daily events: tenderness after conflict, tension held quietly in the body, endurance that becomes strength, renewal that arrives without announcement.
Another recurring thread is the meeting of emotion and structure. Certain feelings arrive with force and complexity, and TOVA’s practice searches for a form capable of carrying them with clarity. Color becomes a vessel for mood. Geometry becomes a way to organize intensity. The series gives me space to remain with one question long enough for meaning to deepen and language to refine.
TOVA’s themes are not fixed subjects for me. They evolve with lived experience. I return to what feels essential and translate it into a visual field that stays open to the viewer.
Can you walk us through your process – from the first idea to a finished piece?
My process begins with an inner state, a feeling that rises from lived experience, layered and difficult to name. I try to hold the emotional temperature of a moment and translate it into form.
In the studio, TOVA’s process unfolds through attention and rhythm. I move across the space, mixing and reducing. A compressed palette keeps the field focused and clarifies each decision. From the initial feeling, I identify a behavior, pressure, pace, return, expansion, compression, and I build a structure that can hold that behavior and keep it visible.
Many works belong to a series. In TOVA’s practice, the series lets the same emotional state take shape in different ways, refining itself through variation. One canvas proposes, the next clarifies, another resolves or deepens tension. The series becomes my method for studying the same emotional field through multiple expressions, each revealing a different shade of its language.
I finish a piece at the moment of recognition, when the painting aligns with the feeling that began it. There is a clear inner signal. The surface holds what I felt, and the work no longer asks for anything more.
What are you currently working on, and are there any upcoming exhibitions or projects you’d like to share?
TOVA is currently exploring how feelings change within structured environments. I’m focusing on nature and perception, observing how the same day can feel entirely different when one condition changes. Morning light carries one emotional temperature. Rain brings another, even when everything else remains still.
This exploration reflects the scientific side of TOVA’s approach. I form hypotheses, isolate variables, and observe each change to understand its effect. In the studio, this becomes series work, a steady structure with calibrated variations that reveal new emotional outcomes. Each project unfolds like a set of perceptual studies, making subtle variations of feeling visible through form.
Alongside painting, TOVA continues to develop multimedia projects where image meets voice and original music, extending the same inquiry through time and sensory space. Exhibition dates and announcements will be shared as schedules are confirmed.
How has your practice evolved over the years – what has changed, and what has stayed the same?
My practice has evolved alongside life itself, changing as perception deepens and experience accumulates. Over time, TOVA’s work has become more precise in structure and more disciplined in how it holds intensity. Series now play a larger role, offering a way to explore one emotional state across multiple works with increasing clarity and depth.
Several elements remain constant in TOVA’s practice. Abstraction continues to anchor the work because it keeps the image open and alive. The studio process still relies on momentum and sustained attention rather than predetermined plans. Each piece continues as a living process, guided by presence, intuition, and the moment of recognition.
TOVA’s practice has also expanded into multimedia. Painting remains the foundation, while time-based works introduce video, sound, original music, and poems, allowing ideas to unfold through movement, rhythm, and voice while staying connected to the language of the series.
What advice would you give to emerging artists just starting out, looking back on your own journey?
Listen inward and give attention to your inner world, because that’s where thought begins to take shape.
Your way of seeing will guide your choice of medium and the language that feels authentic to you. Let the work grow from that inner logic.
Allow yourself freedom in the studio and pair it with consistency. Build a rhythm you can return to. Let limitations bring clarity. Let the repetition of a series teach you your language through gradual refinement. Over time, TOVA’s work begins to speak with greater precision, and the people who connect with it begin to feel its meaning.