"PKD" Painting

elenA is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Switzerland. She studied fine arts at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University in Boston and holds a Bachelors degree in political science from University of Zurich as well as a Masters degree in Business Engineering from ZHAW in Switzerland.

Her work is about balancing extremes and deals with topics such as psychological and/or physical abuse and its consequences, mental illness and spirituality.

Elena has autism spectrum disorder and suffered multiple bouts of depression over the course of her life. To her, making art is a way of life and also a survival mechanism. Later in life she trained to become an art therapist, which helped her to use art making as a way to tap into the unconscious and to mobilise self-healing properties.

With regards to collage making she looked to Hannah Höch as inspiration and role model. Her interest in political philosophy led her to the writings of Richard Lichtman, a Marxist theorist, whom she became pen pals with. As to the crude and explicit display of human emotion, she looks up to the work of Francis Bacon and Eric Fischl. As far as non-figurative work, the landscapes of Georgia O’Keeffe and April Gornik have been a wonderful source of inspiration and inner balance.