GATHERING

Biography 

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Elena was born in Montreal to artist parents, grew up in a family surrounded by the excitement of painting and art making, and now lives with her partner in their studio home in Vancouver, on unceded ancestral lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, and Wales. 

Elena teaches painting and drawing at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and gives workshops in Travel Sketching. She worked in illustration and design at BCIT for 22 years and has given solo and group art shows on the Pacific Coast since the 1970’s at art galleries, libraries, community centres, cafes, a microbrewery, salons and studios. 

This show shares recent pieces gathered from Elena’s travel sketchbooks. They speak to her daily practice of living art as she paints and sketches in situ at a variety of gatherings of people and places – Vancouver Folk and Jazz Festivals, Jericho beach, Matheson Lake, Stanley Park, streets and cafes of Vancouver, and the Swan and Globe, Hay, Wales ... 

As Elena is gathered by these events, her sketchbooks have become a place where her travel sketching informs and regenerates her art making. A response to the natural world and human condition, her watercolour and ink paintings act as a celebration of the day-to-day recordings, experimenting, participation, flow, shifting colours, moving lines of life, of love, longing and joy.