YELENA KHANEVSKAYA
BIOGRAPHY
Yelena Khanevskaya was born and raised in Russia. Since childhood she was greatly interested in art and received her first art training in Children’s Art School in Novomoskovsk, Russia. After graduating from there and completing high school, Yelena was accepted into Oryol State Pedagogical University where she completed my Masters of Art Education degree. The artistic training in Russia followed academic traditions, and for 5 years she, with other students, was subjected to rigorous studies of drawing, painting, and sculpting techniques, beginning with plaster casts and inanimate objects, and continuing to the study of human skeletal and muscular structure, and culminating with human body. Compositional studies and Art History, as well as introduction to a number of folk art traditions, were also implemented throughout the years of study.
After graduation, Yelena worked as an artist on silk before moving to United States. It is here, in the United States, that Yelena started to paint and draw professionally. While working on honing her own artistic skills, she also taught children’s and adult group art classes. Yelena continues to offer private and small group instruction to local artists, as well as offering commissions, mainly in portraiture and landscape.
Over the years Yelena participated in a large number of local and regional group and juried art shows, such as Oregon Trail Days Art Show and Sale; as well as museum shows, such as the Western Spirit Art Show in Cheyenne, WY, Nebraskaland Days show at Prairie Arts Center, North Platte, NE, and Sprit show at MONA, NE. Besides these, Yelena had a number of solo exhibits over the years at West Nebraska Arts Center, Carnegie Arts Center, Norfolk Arts Center, Burkholder Project and others.
For the last couple of years, Yelena has been running Studio 7 – a working studio and gallery downtown Scottsbluff, NE, where she teaches a number of private students, workshops, and exhibits her art. Yelena is represented by several art galleries in the Midwest.
ARTIST STATEMENT: ONE HUNDRED WESTERN SKIES (Currently featured at Gallery 9)
The One Hundred Western Skies series grew out of what became a daily ritual for me during COVID: doing a small sky painting. During this time when we were all confined to our homes, living as close to nature as I do provided me an opportunity to spend more time outdoors in different times of the day than I would normally have during school year. I had more chances to catch so many fleeting moments when slight shift of colors happens in the sky, when the patterns of clouds against the stark blue form fantastical creatures, during the magical ‘golden hour,’ when the glow of the sun, already beyond the horizon, casts unimaginable filters over the land...
When everything seemed so uncertain in the world those first months, sitting down daily to record yet another remarkable Western skyscape became a very important (and calming) ritual. It’ s a very common sentiment, but I immediately fell in love with the wide-open skies when I settled in Western Nebraska. Over the years, I have painted hundreds of skyscapes – and I am not tired of them in the least! But these, mostly small, sky paintings of the last couple of years became very meaningful in a different way. Being far away from my family and worried about their fate in the face of the pandemic uncertainty, I visualized that we are all under the same sky, and as the Earth turns, they will also experience that part of the sky at some point, albeit perhaps not as colorful as we have here, due to all the dust! ;)
However cliché this might sound, this mindset and the sky painting ritual brought me comfort – and hope!
“In the sky an infinitude of hope,
a canvas of glory –
all possibilities mine!”
-Terri Guillemets
Most of the titles of the paintings come from musical terms – as I imagined particular movements or musical expressions could be illustrated by these skyscapes. ~Yelena
