yelena

I like feeling the heavy exhales of the ocean. I always get a little terrified, and also joyful.

I like to observe people, to read into their moods and characters through the movements of their bodies, from their ways of walking and mannerisms. All of this amazes and amuses me, providing plentiful material for my graphics and illustrations. I like to feel the life of a face in a portrait

energy and because of this I always try to work in a way that is like praying.

I like working with children because in teaching them, I learn myself. I try to teach them patience and perseverence. And I love to see children's eyes when something turned out the way they like it, when they have done something they could not do earlier.

To see a selection of my students' work, click on student work.

story about a tree, a vase filled with faded flowers, a desolate beach. I like working en plein air—outside—in any weather, even when hands get numb in the wind and the harmony of a November gray palette as inviting as the rich greens in late June. I am not afraid of inclement weather, but of my inclement moods because I never work when in a bad mood. I believe that the energy of my moods is secretly present in my pieces and inevitably influences the viewer. I see it as my sacred duty to fill my work only with positive

where the finest line can express a fleeting emotion, a thought (or maybe a lack of it) hidden behind a smile.

I like to draw simple objects and to think about them as if they were people living human lives. Each object is a quiet story in itself. Often people leave us, but the things they leave behind stay. My husband and I often set up to paint the same thing, but each one of us tells a different

I never wanted to be famous because I like simplicity and quietude, but I always signed my work because I like order in life.

I have always liked drawing—as long as I can remember myself—and I always knew that I would be an artist, simply because thoughts of other things rarely visited me. I like painting and can cry looking at one. I like music and often cry listening to people sing. I like to sit quietly in a cool room, breathing in the air of the paintings on which I am working. I like to sit in the evenings under a lamp, thumbing through an art album, staring for a long time at the familiar paintings of my favorite artists. I like many things. . . I like the freshness and cool of the big ocean water, where everything is wide, damp and windy. I was born by the sea and that is why perhaps I always get particularly excited when painting the smooth surface of the ocean, the yachts, the fish, the bushes on the shores of a harbor—all things soaked in salty air.