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“The sea is not a backdrop, but a living presence.”
For some people, their hometown is just a dot on a map. For SILVI The Artist, however, Burgas is a city with which she shares a deep personal connection. There, the sea is not a backdrop, but a living presence that evokes a sense of movement, change, and growth.
Throughout the different stages of her life, SILVI has rediscovered Burgas time and again: as a child, as a student at the Burgas branch of the Academy of Arts, and today as a professional artist. “I feel closer to the city and more at home here than ever,” she says.
Her earliest memories related to art go back to when she was about 3 or 4 years old. Even then, her curiosity about the blank page was a driving force. One of her favorite family stories recounts how her mother would often find her after kindergarten with new “works of art,” drawn not on paper, but directly on her own body.
In kindergarten, SILVI also learned her first important lesson from a teacher: to observe first, then to draw. He showed her how a tree trunk takes shape, how it branches out, and then placed her in front of a blank sheet of paper. An approach that, years later, continues to define the way SILVI works and perceives the world.
“I wanted to hear my own voice more clearly.”
Until the age of 18, painting was just a hobby; she never imagined it could become a career. The change came when she entered the National Academy of Arts, where the encounter with different techniques, competition, and high standards did not deter her. On the contrary: they unlocked her potential and the confidence that her creativity could take a professional direction.
After completing her education, she had the opportunity to work as an assistant to the renowned Bulgarian artist Georgi Andonov. This encounter proved to be a turning point, because it was he who taught her to be uncompromisingly critical of her own work and never to consider anything a final achievement. Working with him, SILVI came to understand the difference between art that is truly contemporary and art that remains trivial.
After a year and a half, the moment came when the need for distance arose. Not because the student must reject the teacher, but because sometimes one’s own voice can only be heard when the other’s grows quieter. At the same time, social media and her first clients strengthen SILVI’s desire to have her own studio, her own space, and her own rhythm.
Creative freedom, however, also carries pitfalls such as perfectionism, which is familiar to almost every artist. The solution for SILVI does not come through more control, but through a return to play, experimentation, and the permission to make mistakes. It is no coincidence that the three words she uses to describe her art are: chaos, search, and order.
“The exhibition ended literally the day before the robbery. We were lucky.”
In October 2025, SILVI’s paintings were exhibited at one of the world’s most important art museums: the Louvre. “It was a dream come true,” she says. And then she adds the sentence that makes the story almost surreal: the exhibition ended literally the day before the night the Louvre was robbed.
Recognition of this magnitude comes after years of experimentation and developing a style known as Abstract Splash Figurativism. SILVI freely splashes paint onto the canvas and, from the resulting chaos, brings forth the form of an animal, a face, or a landscape. There is no preliminary plan, no sketch. The paint falls, she watches, and at a certain moment, the inevitable begins to take shape from the random. This process makes her recognizable on social media, and it is precisely this process that lies behind every work, whether it is an original or a print.
Her original paintings find their collectors, but for those just discovering her, the canvas prints, enhanced with hand-applied paint, are perhaps the closest to the original experience. All of this can be found on her international website.
When we asked her what message she wants to convey through her art, her answer is telling: she doesn’t aim for a specific message, but rather a reaction from the viewer. May it make someone smile, think, or even get angry. For SILVI, the meaning lies in the energy a piece evokes, not in the instruction it gives. Sometimes, that is precisely the most sincere form of art.
SILVI The Artist website: www.silvitheartist.com
