It's a Wonderful Life! Painting

Born in Russia, contemporary artist Ermilkina now lives and works in New Jersey. In 1998 she received her MFA from State Art and Industry Academy Saint Petersburg Russia. Her artworks have been featured in various solo and group exhibitions in international galleries and museum like The New York Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hunter Museum of American Art, Artspace Warehouse Los Angeles, David Parker NYC, Bluestone Fine Art Gallery Philadelphia, Art Leaders Michigan, Kunstwarenhaus Zurich, Art & Lef Netherlands, RFA Decor Florida, Neiman Marcus etc. Notable collectors include Kelly Clarkson, Los Angeles, CA, Bruno Jovanovic, France. Her dynamic artworks vibrate with color and motion, casting a candied haze across the cityscape. Ekaterina Ermilkina’s original abstract fine art paintings are created using a skillful combination of applying and removing oil paint with a palette knife on canvas. Her inspirations are the expressionistic magic skylines of big cities like Manhattan, Philadelphia, or Chicago filled with colorful skyscrapers. The urban scenic views are abstracted and rich with vivid and textured layers. Ermilkina’s emotional architectural patchwork and mosaic cityscapes radiate a life of balance and positive energy. Artist Statement I cannot remember a time in my life before I was a painter. Architecture first drew me in and became a subject of my painting while attending graduate school. During my subsequent travels throughout Europe, I was awakened to the history that buildings carry with them, and the way past and present are in dialogue with each other within a structure. When I first came to the U.S., it seemed that everything about the architecture was completely new—and, by extension, the sense of history and culture, and what the buildings had to say. It was impossible to continue working in quite the same way. The experience of seeing skyscrapers for the first time had an enormous imaginative impact, and the effects continue to reverberate in my work, both in its content and in my evolving technique. The modernist style of the buildings seemed to demand a more modernist artistic approach, and I was inspired to create the “Urban Series”. Here, my paintings began to be more abstract. My medium is oil on canvas, and working with color and texture is an ongoing exploration. Modern pointillism has been a revelation for me.