St. Clair I Painting

I am using different media for my artwork - oil on canvas, watercolour, pastel and original print. During recent five years I mostly painting. Currently my favorite theme is cityscapes. I life-paint them on the streets of downtown Toronto and sometimes complete work in my studio. Hunting for an object in city jungle is an exciting and fascinating process for me. The goal is to get feeling of resonance with the environment, with the pulse of the city. I can’t and don’t want to work with photographs. I have to be inside. I have to see how rapidly everything in the city (people, cars, clouds and light) moves, changes, disappears. I reflect this quickness in my works by sketchy appearance, incompleteness of my canvases. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Elena Roginsky captures a moment in time through a process of observation and introspection. Her works are emotional and painterly, and rooted in the historical tradition of painting. They are created on location as has been done throughout the history of painting. Roginsky loads blank canvases and paints into her van and goes for a drive. When she feels inspired, she pulls over at the side of the road, places a blank canvas on the steering wheel, her easel, and begins to paint. Elements like the weather and the time of day lie heavily in her paintings. Spontaneity and nervousness seem to spill from the surface of each painting. The only time related obstacle to the completion of each canvas is when the police want her to move her vehicle or threaten Elena with a parking ticket. There is no returning to the studio with photographs to adjust or change the final painting. They flow in the moment in which they are painted, a thought in the process of becoming, a simple conscious effort to capture a moment in time. When I asked the artist about her preferred time of day and weather for painting Roginsky stated that “I like rain, snow because they make softness of contours and make air visible. I like summer as well but I don't like cloudless sky. It is as hard to explain why as explain why not every gentleman prefers blonds.” Her favourite locations for painting are busy city streets. Born in Russia, Elena grew up in Moscow and loves the big city feeling. She believes that her childhood experiences are the inspiration for her subject matter. She left Russia to escape during "perestroika" in 1991 and moved to Jerusalem, Israel.