Elena Peresvetova is a UK based artist who incorporates in her art her passion for impressionistic painting and contemporary conceptual thinking. Elena explores the ideas of traditionalism in art. With the advancement of modern mass media, art becomes a more powerful tool, able to influence whole populations and societies like never before. However, more and more artists are abandoning the traditional standards of drawing and painting in favour of purely emotional or conceptual forms of art. Elena is searching for a way to balance these two in her work, combining impressionistic values with contemporary conceptual thinking.

On the one hand, her art is strongly influenced by Russian impressionists, such as Valentin Serov (1865-1911), Konstantin Korovin (1861 – 1939) and Nikolay Feshin (1881 – 1955). The key characteristics of Elena’s impressionistic artworks are a blend of the emotional impact created by the scenery and the desire to produce a meaningful painting, translating not only fleeting feelings and emotions, but also transmitting to the viewer a part of her soul through each and every painting.

On the other hand, her interest in contemporary art and modern art theories led to her developing a specific practical method that combines different materials and approaches with a subconscious and uncontrollable process of creating an image. Thus, to create an initial picture, Elena uses fabrics as a means to produce uncontrollable images. She throws fabric randomly onto a flat vertical surface. It is important that the process is not fully conscious, every time resulting in unique and nonrepeatable image. She then takes and crops photos to identify a final image. Some of the folds can arrange themselves into a shape that would resemble other objects. This process is completed by transferring the selected abstract images to a canvas using the traditional technique of oil painting.

Elena’s method is based on a combination of ideas of abstract expressionism and classical philosophy of beauty. From abstract expressionism, following Freud’s theory of subconscious, she pursues spontaneous expression of the inner world in chaotic, random forms, not defined or organised through logical thinking. She considers the act of throwing fabric such artistic device, aimed at producing random and unique folds, arranging themselves into unplanned shapes.

Another principle that Elena applies throughout her practice is David Hume’s axiom that beauty is not the property of an object. If beauty exists in the mind of a viewer only and is different for every person, then the search for true, objective beauty and ugliness is worthless. Artists instead should focus on translating their own feelings and emotions to the viewers, evoked by the artwork creation and expressed by it.

It is a combination of those things that Elena strives her art method to be- maintaining the value of impressionistic paintings, while still being stochastic and subjectively beautiful.

Elena is holding a BA degree in Fine Art and Art History from Kingston University in London. She also finished a postgraduate course at the prestigious Moscow Surikov Art Institute. Her works are in private collections across UK, Europe and USA.