‘#eatpraylovepaint’ at Bryant Street Gallery shows off painter’s broad range

Bryant Street Gallery features Elena Zolotnitsky

ARTIST STATEMENT

I paint archetypes. When a chair isn’t really a chair, a flower isn’t really a rose, and a face isn’t really a portrait. Since the painting itself is the main subject – it is my main focus. I am left with surface, time, space and my own emotion. It is already too much to handle. In order to make my point across I simplify everything else. In the finished work I strive for physical, as well as emotional depth in the layers of paint. At the same time being cautious not to “overdo” them. I prefer my paintings “breathing”, with a lacuna of space here and there. They are in transition, they are all becoming, just like myself.

It’s been a long road, almost 40 years spent in front of an easel. A life long of doing and thinking: what do I want to share with my paintings?

 

I like to think of my artworks as “sonnets” (a poetic form of a specific structure for expressing courtly love) – conveying my admiration for life, art, beauty and enchantment in a format of a painting. I communicate my feelings and emotions in paint, its color and its plasticity. The way I am treating the surface – sometimes unsaid, sometimes undone – is an important part of each image. I try to make them as exciting and vibrant as I can in their seemingly repetitiveness. (How do you say “I love you” in so many ways?!). I treat every painting as a challenge, in-tuned for that single true bright note, that I can start building the magic on. Allowing my sense of time and personal identity to dissolve into another dimension.