August in Odessa Print

Elena was born and raised in Moldova (former USSR), but in the last 24 years she has lived and worked in Harrogate. Her work exists between the real and the imaginary, representation and abstraction. Elena’s paintings explore beauty, chaos and predictability of urban landscape built up gradually over time. Some cityscapes are derived from her travels and firsthand observations, and some are from images found on the internet, mirroring how specific locations are drawn together by their similarities, which are surprisingly bigger than the differences. Elena combines traditional painting techniques with less conventional methods: laser etched drawings and grid-system structures applied over pre-painted surfaces. Through the rendering of colour, texture and composition, she focuses on atmosphere, memories and connections. Main influences on her work at the moment are early Cubists, Pavel Filonov, Rauschenberg, Mark Bradford, Lars Elling, Deborah Tarr, Paul Noble,