Tania Rivilis

🤘San Francisco! Super excited to share with you that my two drawings will be displayed at the Ryan Graff Contemporary
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In Carbon:
A Collection of Drawings On show
✖️April 18 14-May 30✖️
Opening Reception April 18, 5-9 PM
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Pushing back against the notion that drawing occupies a secondary position to painting, In Carbon presents works that assert themselves as complete, vital, and fully realized in their own right. These are not studies, preliminaries, or gestures toward some other, theoretically more finished form.
They are works of immediacy and conviction, carrying within them a directness that is uniquely suited to the language of drawing itself.
Bringing together an international selection of artists, the exhibition highlights a wildly varied approach to the discipline, demonstrating drawing’s breadth as both a technical and conceptual practice.
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⚡️Italy workshop Art Escape Italy is coming in September 🤌🏼
I’m so excited to be part of the art retreat again! Last two years were absolutely epic, we were like a weird lively family, spending all days together, painting, talking, dancing and making pizza! I have such a warm feeling about last times and I can’t wait to get there again! This time we will work on a portrait with hands and some cool designs.
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Few spots left⚡️⚡️⚡️ join me in September in Italy💛
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Find more info at Art Escape Italy or my links in bio. ☺️ciao!
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Continuing the series about my beautiful sitters – and yes, they’re not AI, but real, breathing, outrageously good-looking young men. I’ve been lucky enough to meet them in all sorts of circumstances: in cafés, on the street, sometimes even on Instagram.
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You’ve seen this face many times before, so let’s make it official: meet Connor from Australia. We met in a café in Setúbal; I kept staring at him, trying to behave, and in the end I just couldn’t help myself and asked him to come to my studio. Since then he’s become one of my all-time favorite models to paint. 💛
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The architecture of his face is a painter’s dream: sharp features, that perfect nose, huge eyes (by the way, Connor’s eyes are different colors), all of it begging to be translated into oil. Every brushstroke feels like a small celebration.
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Connor’s face has already been everywhere: shown at an annual exhibition in London, nominated for two major prizes at at the , glowing on big billboards around the world, traveling to shows in Spain, the Netherlands, the US, and popping up in magazines. His portrait keeps slipping into the world like a quiet celebrity. 🍸
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On my workshops I paint Connor a lot, too. At the last workshop in Portugal he even came to the studio in person, and we all stood there, inspecting him like art detectives. Watching the students’ reactions was priceless. As you can see, I absolutely love painting Connor – and I’m clearly not done with him yet😅 Connor, you know it, right? 😅
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You will see Connor very soon again and in a very awesome place. Stay tuned🫶🏽
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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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