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Milena Popova
BULGARIA
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"For me, painting is longing, journey, touch, and pure expression."
Milena Popova paints from a place of gratitude, describing herself as one of the fortunate few who received an unexpected gift in life: an endless source of inspiration and joy in the ability to see and feel the beauty of the natural world. Based in Sofia, Bulgaria, she approaches each canvas as an invitation to share her inner world in color, emotion, and form. Her deepest wish is simple and generous, that her artworks might touch the soul of whoever stands before them, stir a sense of dreaming, and bring a measure of beauty and joy into their day. This spirit of open-hearted sharing runs quietly through everything she makes.
Desire | Oil
$1,200
"Desire" is one of my intuitive landscapes, inspired by the beauty of the sea - the places on the seashore, where the peaceful, endless view of the sea surface lets my soul dream. I painted it this winter, being far from nature physically, but close to it in my imagination and through my art.
Nature sits at the very center of her practice, not as a subject to be copied but as a living presence to be felt and answered. Popova discovers beauty freshly each day, in the sea, in the turning of the seasons, in the ordinary details scattered through the world around her, and she carries that discovery back to the canvas to recreate it in her own language. For her, painting is many things at once: a longing, a desire, a journey, an impact, a spirit, a touch, a doubt, a joy, and above all an expression. It becomes the means through which her emotions and her bond with the natural world are made visible.
Freedom | Oil
“Freedom” is one of the works, which I created Alla Prima in one breath. It perfectly matches its title, because my associations and feelings during the process were those – freedom, beauty, and power. I painted it in the autumn of 2020.
"Nature gives me endless inspiration and joy every single day."
She describes herself as an intuitive rather than an academic artist, and this distinction matters deeply to how she works. Rather than following inherited rules or formal systems, she trusts feeling, instinct, and the direct pull of what moves her in a given moment. Oil painting is her chosen and most beloved technique, drawn again and again from the inspiration of nature, the sea, and the shifting seasons. Within that medium she has found a way of working that feels entirely her own, guided less by convention than by the honest response of her hand and eye to the beauty she perceives around her every single day.
Blue Seashore | Oil
$1,200
“Blue seashore” is my reflection of a real place, situated near the beautiful Greek seashore near Volos, which I visited in 2020. The high rocks overlooking the sea offer a magnificent view of the peaceful bay.
Her signature approach is oil painting with a spatula, a method that gives her work its distinctive character and physical presence. Through the palette knife she achieves a striking contrast, finesse and lightness held in the same surface as strength and richly embossed texture. The paint is not merely applied but built, layered, and shaped, so that each canvas carries a tactile, sculptural quality alongside its color and light. This tension between delicacy and force is central to her voice as a painter, allowing a single work to feel both gentle and powerful, both airy and grounded, in a way that rewards close and patient looking.
“Crystal sea” is a result of my imagination and my love for the sea. I painted in my studio in Sofia in 2020. With this landscape, I want to show the sea in its calm, beauty, and lightness and to call a feeling of relief.
Crystal Sea | Oil
$420
"When desire and creative energy are present, I truly believe anything becomes possible for anyone, and this conviction guides every canvas and every workshop I share."
"Three years ago an irresistible longing to meet the colors and the palette again appeared in my life, and I followed it without hesitation. I paint from nature, the sea, the seasons, building each surface with a spatula so that finesse and strength live together in one work. My deepest happiness comes when a painting finally meets its person and touches something in them, and I carry that same joy into the workshops I hold for children and young people, because creativity was given to me as a gift and I believe it is meant to be shared."
Illusion in Violet | Oil
$420
“Illusion in Violet” There are periods, when violet and purple are one of my favorite, preferred colors, especially in painting flowers. “Illusion in violet” is a part of my series “Purple”, painted in the spring of 2020 in Sofia, the capital town of Bulgaria.
Her earliest connection to art began in childhood, at the children's art school in her hometown, a place she remembers as genuinely magical and the source of some of her most treasured memories. That early spark, however, did not lead directly to a life in painting. Her professional path took a different direction entirely, and for many years her creative practice fell quiet, set aside beneath the demands of other work and other responsibilities. Yet the memory of those first encounters with color remained, waiting patiently beneath the surface of a busy life for the moment when it might one day be reawakened and allowed to return.
Morning flowers | Oil
I painted "Morning Flowers" in the summer of 2020, on a wonderful sunny morning in the open air, surrounded by green plants. I tried to reach here the effect of freedom, impression, and detail in one. This surrounding was a gift, which inspired the creative process, and made it fluent and light.
That reawakening arrived three years ago, when an irresistible longing to meet the colors and the palette again surfaced unexpectedly in her life. What began as a quiet need became a full return to creativity, pursued with seriousness and devotion. She began painting in oils under the mentorship of master art classes led by the Bulgarian artist Georgi Petrov and the Russian artist Alexander Sergeev. To these two teachers she credits the very foundations of her style, the freedom, the expression, and the power that now define her paintings, and the confidence to trust her own instinct fully as she works across each new and demanding canvas.
“Nostalgia” is a special painting for me because it was created during the isolation period. Painting landscapes helped me overcome this lack of being in touch with nature. This artwork was awarded the Honorable Mention Award in the contest: “How I Remember 2020”.
Nostalgia | Oil
$1,200
The past year marked a significant milestone in her artistic journey. At its close she held her first solo exhibition in Sofia, a moment of genuine arrival after years of quiet preparation and renewed effort. Alongside her paintings she presented her first collection of poems, weaving together the visual and the literary into a single expressive offering. For Popova, the truest happiness comes when her art touches and thrills another person, and when a painting finally meets the individual it was somehow always meant to reach. That meeting, between the work and its person, remains for her the deepest reward of the entire creative life.
"I am an intuitive artist, guided by feeling rather than rules."
Increasingly, her paintings have begun to travel beyond her studio and her country, becoming part of private collections both within Bulgaria and abroad. Every one of her artworks is entirely hand-painted and built upon its own original scenario, so that no two pieces repeat the same idea or gesture. This commitment to originality reflects a larger belief that each canvas deserves its own honest reason for existing, its own story to tell. As her work finds homes in new places and with new people, it carries her particular vision of nature and feeling outward, quietly extending the reach of the beauty she first learned to see so clearly.
Soul | Oil
This landscape was inspired by a photography of a friend of mine, who lives near this magnificent place. I painted my improvisation, trying to recreate on the canvas all the impressions and emotions, which this beautiful place calls in me – depth, lightness, desire, mystery, and strength.
Beyond her oil paintings, Popova practices a wide range of applied arts, including painting on glass and textile and the making of ceramics. These pursuits she approaches mainly as a joyful hobby, but also, meaningfully, as a volunteer. She organizes creative workshops for children and young people with disabilities, sharing the same gift of creativity that transformed her own life. This generosity is not separate from her art but an extension of it, a belief that beauty and making are meant to be given away as much as kept. Through these workshops, her creative energy flows outward into her community in the most direct and human of forms.
I painted these flowers with the sunrise, in an open space, under the sky on the Greek seashore near Volos. This painting combines the contrast of finesse and lightness, and at the same time, strength and embossed texture of oils. It gives me the feeling of harmony.
Harmony | Oil
$420
Across all these forms, painting, poetry, applied arts, and teaching, Popova sustains a single guiding conviction: that when desire and creative energy are present, anything is possible for anyone at all. Her work stands as quiet evidence of this belief, the fruit of a talent rediscovered after years of silence and pursued with open-hearted devotion ever since. She continues to paint, to make, and to share, wishing health, joy, and inspiration outward to all who encounter her art. In her hands, creativity remains not a profession alone but a way of living, an ongoing gift both received with gratitude and generously passed along.
Sunflowers | Oil
“Sunflowers” gathers the rich, colorful and bright palette of autumn. Here I used a multi-layered painting to recreate and reach the effect of the abundance of this grateful season.
"My spatula holds finesse and strength within one single surface."
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