"Self-portrait with the sun" Painting

Elena Pach lives and works in Chicago. She was raised in Kyiv in a family of artists, in a one-hundred-unit apartment building belonging to the Artists’ Union, where painters, ceramicists, sculptors, and art critics were her neighbors. Surrounded by this creative community from childhood, she grew up believing that the world was made almost entirely of artists.

At the age of ten, Pach entered the highly selective Republican Art School in Kyiv, beginning an intensive classical art education. She later studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, graduating in 1994 from the Faculty of Fine Arts and earning professional accreditation as an artist. She is a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine.

In 1994, the same year she completed her studies, Pach moved to the United States, drawn by a desire for freedom, adventure, and new experience. She has lived and worked in Chicago ever since, while maintaining a deep connection to the visual culture and artistic traditions of Ukraine.