Ilya Shkipin (b. 1989) holds a BFA in Illustration from the Academy of Art in San-Francisco and currently lives and works in Hayward, California. Ilya employs gestural paint application to interpret the spectrum of emotional response through amorphous imagery. In his paintings, he depicts reality by placing anguished figures in dream-like empty, distorted spacesHe explores a personal connection with subject, taking inspiration from photos, movie stills and imagination. An ordinary scene in a journalistic sense dissolves and melts, figures bleed into each other, into the environment, frozen in time, breaking down by emotions of space. Besides art he is a singer and a bass player in an experimental indie-rock band The Laytcomers.