Elena Zolotnitsky
For the last year I have been infatuated with the series I am working on. I named it Extinct. It is a collection of semi abstract characters. They are "portraits" of antique arm chairs, which exist only in my imagination. Each of them is colored into certain emotion. The first one I painted refused to come to life till I laid the gold leaf application on its backing, reminiscent of vertebrae... That intuitive move transformed the object of an old chair into a species of extinction. The reference that gave the name to the first painting and to the series. I see this collection as a logical progression of my creative journey. Over the past few years I have been more interested in the abstract qualities of the surface. Color becoming the essential means of expression. With the simplifying of shapes and composition and discovering a new complexity of color and paint application, I am not just painting a picture - I am experiencing one. The physical part of "experience" involves a lot of scrapings, impastos, transparencies, palette knife applications, accidents and false starts - "working" the surface till it starts breathing on its own.
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