The Sleeping Cat (2026) Original Acrylic Painting by Zakhar Shevchuk

The Sleeping Cat places an apparently provocative encounter inside an unexpectedly ordinary domestic setting. A seated man in black and a vivid red hood is accompanied by a woman wearing a corset-like dress, stockings and high boots. The visual references to erotic role-play are evident, but Zakhar Shevchuk deliberately avoids explaining the relationship between the figures or fixing the scene to a single narrative.

Painted on a substantial 140x100 cm canvas, the work combines simplified anatomy with vigorous brushwork, drips and large fields of muted grey, cream and black punctuated by intense orange, yellow and blue. The figures feel simultaneously immediate and theatrical: recognisable people transformed into characters through colour, costume and expressive distortion.

The painting’s title reveals its quietest detail. On the chair at the lower right lies a sleeping cat, almost concealed within the composition and apparently oblivious to everything around it. This small detail introduces humour into an otherwise sexually and psychologically charged image, turning the painting into something more ambiguous – part intimate scene, part performance, part completely ordinary evening.

Materials used:

Acrylic

Details:

• Acrylic painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 100 x 140 x 2cm (unframed)
• Signed certificate of authenticity
• Style: Expressive and gestural
• Subject: People and portraits