Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, Ekaterina Dimieva moved to New Zealand in 2001. She paints most days from her studio in Parnell, Auckland.

Her practice is rooted in the exploration of sensation, transformation, and becoming through abstraction. Experimentation is central: gestural swathes of oil paint meet thin washes of pigment, while textured clusters rupture and reassemble into intricate, volatile surfaces. Her paintings emphasise the sensory, presenting rhythmic flows and forces that continually collide, morph, and interfere.

Colour is both a structural and emotional device in her work, behaving less like surface ornament than a living system – saturated, unpredictable, and self-generating. Ekaterina’s compositions are dynamic, even volatile: patterns repeat and rupture, hues clash and bloom, lines loop and stutter, creating fractured constellations of sensation underpinned by a subtle scaffolding of order.

She completed her Masters of Fine Art at Elam in 2020. She has been part of many solo and group shows in recent years and was a finalist in several national art competitions. Her work is included in the Wallace Arts Trust collection.