Elena Kraskowski (born 1966) is a Swedish artist who paints abstract, and also works with mixed media artworks combining painting and digital work. The digital artworks are available in limited fine art prints.
Elena was born and grew up in Stockholm, Sweden. She resides and works in both Stockholm and a village in southern France, and has held solo exhibitions and contributed to group shows in Sweden and other countries. As a child, Elena’s inner life was full of pictures, fantasy and scenarios, from where she created her own kind of creative projects with stories, illustrations and drawings. After having an education and a full-time job in the PR- and communication business in the end of the 80s, Elenas interest and longing for working with visual pictures made her educate her further in visual communication and photography, and she ended up as a photographer in the 90s. She then pursued a profession as a commercial and art photographer for over two decades, working preferably with a Hasselblad 6×6, in love with the square and all the crafts that go with the analog technique. However, the format was not as popular with graphic designers. Nor is her penchant for blur and for the time being and commissioners remarkable blemishes, patterns and compositions. Even then, she also thought it was difficult to balance the creative process with a more traditional mission culture. A constant struggle that she found too demanding and suffocating. After following the digital development and into today’s photographic market, Elena finally left the assignments completely behind 2017. She also left the photographic image in favor of the abstract painting. Everything else was scaled away except her intuition, the surface, the shape, the colors and the relationship between them all.
Today, Elena mainly focuses on abstract painting, and also a technique where she works further with her paintings digitally, taking inspiration from both analog photography processes and the possibilities in digital editing. A sort of summary of her history and experiences. The artistic role models Pollock, Rothko and Gerhard Richter inspire. All artists are devoted and steadfast in their own research and expression.
“Because of my background as a photographer, I think that I have taken a specific interest in aesthetic expressions. I explore and look for answers in what I deem is both aesthetic and emotional, as well as intellectually interesting. Balance. Unbalance. In between. I also constantly return to the relation between what is and what is not – how negative and positive spaces interact, and how they’re dependent on one another to exist.”
How long have you been an artist and how did you get started?
Elena: I have been working creatively my whole life, first as a writer within public relations, thereafter as a photographer, and now as a visual artist. For over twenty years (1995 – 2017), I worked as a freelance photographer, and also held my own photo exhibitions. Eventually, I quit freelancing and started working exclusively with my own artistic projects. Today I only paint, and sometimes I mix painting and digital editing like in my collection “Elaborations”.
Do you see your art as serving a purpose beyond art?
Elena: According to my philosophy of life, I believe that if I (as well as everybody else) do what feels right according to my heart, it fills a function. Like a ripple effect, it leads somewhere we might never even know of, possibly in both small and grand contexts. For example, a photo project I once did inspire an author to write a novel, something I learnt several years later. The feeling of having reached out to and touched someone through your own works were fantastic! To know that those photographs led to a new project, this time with words, that in its own regard reached out to new people and touched them in some way.
What is the message you are trying to give with your art?
Elena: A great question! And a hard one, at that… On a deeper level, I want to show the complexity of being human. On that note, however, the works I create end up being very personal when it comes to ideas, thoughts, feelings, expressions, and reflections. Hopefully, that evokes an inquisitiveness for the observers to contemplate their own thoughts and feelings. My earlier works in photography also differ from my way of painting. Previously, my work was more idea-based, today it’s more abstract and expressive. However, my works today always originate from thoughts and inner feelings, the complexity and relations between thoughts, feelings, and questions I have inside.
What are your plans for the future?
Elena: Haha! To go on until I’ve kicked the bucket. I of course hope that I’ll keep on growing and developing as an artist. That I get to be a part of more artistic projects and exhibitions out in the world, to meet and get to know talented colleagues, and also to meet and reflect with observers of my artwork. I also
hope that, in the future, I will financially manage to solely work with my creative projects.
What is a little known fact you would like to share?
Elena: Hmm… What would that be? Maybe that I’m stubborn and impatient? Haha!
How does creating art make you feel?
Elena: Most often happy, alive, and truthful. Sometimes mad and frustrated.
What does your art aim to say to your audience?
Elena: This question connects to the one about the message, I think. Spontaneously, I want to say ”Look, how interesting!”. It might sound childish, but I share parts of my inner life, my thoughts, my feelings, my questions, as well as my own complexity, to be able to communicate with those of other people.
How do you get ideas for each piece of art?
Elena: I used to work more clearly after ideas that I made come to life through photography. When it comes to abstract painting, I don’t have the same basis for ideas, at least not at the moment. The ideas I currently work with usually originate from an idea of wanting to explore something, be that contexts, relations, colors, surfaces… A combination of thoughts and intuition.
Any upcoming shows or workshops we should know about?
Elena: Not for now, unfortunately. My collection “Elaborations”, where I mix painting with digital editing, was planned to show in Spain this April, but that had to be canceled of course. I am also currently in the midst of a creative phase and am painting quite a lot, and therefore haven’t been so active with marketing myself and being seen. I do hope, however, that new opportunities to participate in artistic gatherings, both nationally as well as internationally, will start to roll in again soon. Any tips and showings of interest are of course always much appreciated!
To find out more about Elena and her work please visit her:
Website
Thank you!