"Toys for Adults" (2025) Original Oil Painting by Nina Grigel

"Toys for Adults" is a visual reflection on the traps people create for themselves and how easy it is to mistake a beautiful illusion for real life.
The painting creates a whimsical and allegorical world, balancing between surrealism and social satire.
It is a parable about the adult world, where genuine feelings and natural desires are replaced by surrogates. The "toys" here are social masks, the pursuit of status symbols (the toad), an artificially constructed reality (the beaded cloud), and infantile hobbies (the ceramic duck), all of which distract from deeper existential questions. The swamp becomes a metaphor for routine, comfortable stagnation, and the illusions in which a person can become mired.

Series: "Baby, It's Just the End to Start Again"

What if we were shown that the end is not a finish line, but a door? This series of works offers precisely this perspective. It is a journey to the border, where the ruins of the old world become the foundation for the new.
I invite us to let go of the fear of finality and see in it a magical threshold beyond which a new reality is born.
"Baby, it's just the end..." is both a whisper and a battle cry. It is a reminder that every destruction carries within it the seed of future creation.
Through a series of paintings, I explore the alchemy of transformation: how pain turns into experience, how clarity is born from the ashes of doubt, and how infinite potential arises from emptiness.
Find inspiration for your own "beginning."

Selected Exhibitions:
2025 SberUniversity, Moscow, Russia
2024 “A Word About the Russian Heart” Festival, Beijing, China
2024 ArtExpo New York 2024, New York, USA
2024 La Pigna Gallery, Rome, Italy
2024 ArtPlay Moscow, Kvartiras Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2024 Pavlodar City Museum, Kazakhstan
2023 Shanghai International Art Fair (SIAF), Shanghai, China
2023 «Zdes na Taganke» Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2022 ArtDom, Winzavod, Moscow, Russia
2021 Kibart, Moscow, Russia
2021 International Exhibition Competition Of Futuristic Art, Moscow, Russia
2021 Artplay, Moscow, Russia
2021 Finalist, Russian Art Awards, Moscow House Of Artists, Moscow, Russia
2021 International Exhibition “SCOLKOVO Plaza ArtShow”, Moscow, Russia
2021 Art Cosmos, Evraziya Gallery, Moscow, Russia
2021 Online Exhibition & Competition «Sbornaya Solianka», Alipova Gallery, Moscow, Russia
Collections:
2023 Lucy Chebotina Charity Auction, Private Collection, Moscow, Russia
Publications:
Art MUSE Magazine, "Art Survey" column, Russia

Materials used:

Oil on canvas, removable beaded element on magnets.

Details:

• Oil painting on Canvas
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 95 x 95 x 2cm (unframed)
• Ready to hang
• Signed on the front
• Style: Unspecified
• Subject: People and portraits