Artist Statement
To me an innocent and blooming prepubescent girl is as enigmatic and mysterious as a fairy. Though such girls often keep their energy and natural beauty hidden behind some mundane activity—reading, playing cards, or daydreaming—their pristine vitality always seems to glow from within. Flitting from interest to interest with burning enthusiasm, they remain blissfully unaware of their inner power. Shy and awkward, with limbs too long and eyes too dreamy, they are as endearingly funny and vulnerable in appearance as they are in state of mind.
Elena Zolotnitsky Receives Two Prestigious Awards
"LA MENINA", (10x10" oil and gold leaf on panel), was given the Award of Excellence at the Northern National Art Competition at Nicolett College in Wisconsin. 333 artists from 36 states submitted over 600 slides - only 93 pieces ended up in the show.
"NOT ABOUT A BOY", (12x12" oil and gold on paper) received the Best in Show Award at the Loyola National Works on Paper Competition held at the Crown Center Gallery located on the campus of Loyola University in Chicago (juried by Dan Addington, Director of Gwenda Jay/Addington Gallery, Chicago, IL)
"Beauty always offers its own form of seduction"
— E. George
Perhaps that is why I decided to become an artist about the same time I entered puberty. Even now, every time I offer up my creativity to the world for its judgment, I feel the same hesitation and vulnerability that a 13-year-old girl feels when she steps into a room full of strangers.
When my own daughter reached 14 and began routinely daydreaming, I began painting nudes. Not standard, classical nudes, but those that blend erotica with innocence and vulnerability, nudes expressing the ever changing bodies and feelings of a young girl.
Over the past few years my art has become increasingly personal and intimate, focusing more on the raw physicality of painting. My favorite medium is oil paint, either on canvas or on heavy paper. As I build layer on layer of contrasting hues and textures, I am driven more by my pursuit of the formal concerns of painting instead of by my desire to relate a narrative. Yet I remain always a figurative artist, one who feels a special affinity for the craft, subtlety, and peace of Flemish art and the art of Balthus. My goal is to create paintings that both are well-crafted and probe deeply into the mystery of the medium itself, widening the spectrum of that which is portrayed.
— Elena Zolotnitsky