Oľga Paštéková: Paintings where nature speaks back

Slovak painter Oľga Paštéková turns stains, bleaches, and ghosted lines into wolves, rivers, and lantern-houses, lyrical eco-paintings from Bratislava & Vienna.

Oľga Paštéková: A Lyrical Eco-Poetics

Oľga Paštéková (b. 1984, Slovakia) builds an artistic language where rivers, wolves, and spectral figures act less as motifs than as co-authors.

“I don’t paint landscapes; I paint conversations nature keeps having without us.

Based between Bratislava and Vienna, she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava (VŠVU) and later at the Akademie der bildenden Künste in Vienna under Daniel Richter.

olga pastekova with friends, from dusk till dawn 2023 acrylic airbrush on canvas, artist portrait exhibition view — **Olga Paštéková**: With her friends, Paštéková stands beside *From Dusk Till Dawn* (220 × 123 cm, acrylic–airbrush on canvas, 2023). The work embodies her spectral figuration, where atmosphere bleeds into body and pigment behaves like weather, a portrait of both art and community. *Photo: Andreas Schlichtner. Image courtesy of the artist.*

Her practice spans paintings, large works on paper, and textile-based installations, often infused with ecological urgency and melancholic tenderness.

**Olga Paštéková**: View of the exhibition „The World in Between“, 2022 @lapi_darium. Curator: Radek Wohlmuth @radek_wohlmuth. Photo Martin Maslo. Image courtesy the artist

olga pastekova, textile house installation, stained fabric contemporary art, exhibition the world in between — **Olga Paštéková***: Fragile Balance*, mixed media on wood, 180 × 240 cm, 2020–2021 (detail). Paštéková layers spectral traces into raw materiality, conjuring fragile shelters between myth and ecology. „The World in Between“, 2022 @lapi_darium. Curator: Radek Wohlmuth @radek_wohlmuth .Photo Martin Maslo. Image courtesy the artist

With projects such as Whispering Waters (Art Quarter Budapest residency) and her upcoming intervention at Parallel Vienna, Paštéková positions herself as a voice in contemporary eco-poetics: attentive, fearless, and quietly radical.

olga pastekova, rotkäppchen, mixed media on wood, wolf painting — **Olga Paštéková***: Rotkäppchen*, mixed media on wood, 70 × 50 cm, 2014. A lone wolf figure leans into being, scratched and stained into presence, both fragile outline and haunting shadow. **(right)** “Rotkäppchen,” mixed media on wood, 150 × 100 cm, 2020. **Paštéková’s** wolves are not monsters, but spectral citizens painted with raw immediacy and mythic charge. *Photo: Richie Studio. Image courtesy the artist*

olga pastekova, whispering waters, abstract animal painting, contemporary art — **Olga Paštéková***: Whispering Waters*. Fluid washes of blue and red conjure spectral animals that hover between apparition and pattern, inviting us into Paštéková’s aqueous poetics. @aqb_budapest. *Photo: Zsuzsi Simon. Image courtesy of the artist.*

The Stillness That Screams

Paštéková’s pictures operate like micro-climates.
Pigment is coaxed into fogs, eddies, and sudden clarities.

**Oľga Paštéková paints wolves as guardians, ferrymen, and spectral companions — figures that walk between ruin and dream.** Her canvases fold together abandoned cities, rivers at night, and carnival lights, creating worlds where myth clings to the edges of the everyday. These works vibrate between tenderness and unease, asking us to look closer at the fragile kinship we share with all living presences. *Photos: Richie Studio. Image courtesy of the artist.*

A wolf’s body is mostly atmosphere, defined by what leaks away; an egret glows in negative, a drawing made by the pressure of light.

Her marks, dragged, flooded, scratched, compose a syntax of weather.

The Whispering Waters cycle holds this language closest to the ear: mauve auroras flare over riverine textures, as if sediment itself were a storyteller.

olga pastekova, night walker i, mixed media on brown paper, wolf drawing — **Olga Paštéková***: Night Walker I.*, mixed media on brown paper, 100 × 140 cm, 2005–2006. A spectral wolf drifts through pools of light, its body half-shadow, half-atmosphere. *Image courtesy of the artist.*

Installation pieces, lantern-houses built from stained textiles, extend the paintings into navigable space.

olga pastekova, red moon, mixed media on wood, hanging panels installation — **Olga Paštéková***: Red Moon*, mixed media on wood, 70 × 200 cm, 2015. Hanging panels transform the space into a forest of spectral light and shadow. *Photos: Richie Studio. Image courtesy of the artist.*

We enter, and the work asks: What does shelter mean when the planet is breathing hard? Paštéková answers with careful ferocity: shelter is listening.

**Olga Paštéková**: Dog - God - Good, acryl and ink on canvas, 2011. *Photos: Richie Studio. Image courtesy of the artist.*

Eco-Poetic Themes

River as archive; water as memory
Animal citizens (wolves, ravens, egrets)
Urban peripheries, post-Soviet habitats
Stain/bleach as ecological method
Myth as diagnostic tool, not escape

olga pastekova, in wonderland, mixed media firepainting on wood, wolf and carousel painting — **Olga Paštéková***: In Wonderland*, mixed media with firepainting on wood, max. 200 × 150 cm, 2019. A wolf and carousel horse confront each other in a dreamlike arena where play teeters on the edge of menace and myth. *Photo: Richie Studio. Image courtesy of the artist.*

olga pastekova, wolfsmond installation view volkstheater vienna 2025, red carpet art award — **Olga Paštéková***: Wolfsmond*, installation view in the subway at Volkstheater, Vienna, 2025. A spectral moonlit pack surges through waves of blue, part of the Red Carpet Award exhibition (@red.carpet.art.award). *Photo: Richie Studio. Image courtesy of the artist.*

Notable Series / Visual Motifs

Whispering Waters – aqueous violets & blues; liquid ghosting
Sleep Tight, Sunlight – dawn/nocturne thresholds
Fabric Houses – stained textile shelters, lantern-architecture
Scratched graphite halos; negative silhouettes; carousel/night-fair scenes

painting to wolves in blue black and white acryl, airbrush on canvas — **Olga Paštéková**: From Dusk Till Dawn, acryl, airbrush on canvas, 105x78,5 cm, 2023. *Photo: Richie Studio. Image courtesy of the artist.*

Paštéková’s Contemporary Context

Paštéková stands at the intersection of eco-aesthetics and post-figurative painting.

She rejects catastrophe spectacle for relational poetics, where materials misbehave productively and images emerge as truces between matter and myth.

olga pastekova, from dusk till dawn, acrylic airbrush on canvas, installation view 2023 — **Olga Paštéková**: View of installation „ANIMA-L“, 2023 @galeria_jana_koniarka curator Vladimír Beskid @vladbeskid. *Photo Adam Šákový, image courtesy the artist.*

Follow the River

Follow Olga Paštéková on Instagram and and explore more on her website. Discover her latest works from the aqb Budapest residency, and don’t miss her upcoming intervention at Parallel Vienna.

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