GELENA PAVLENKO

Surrealistic Nature

Nature has become the primary muse for artist Gelena Pavlenko. Her work often combines birds, flowers and butterflies with inanimate objects, such as stone walls, to show how they affect each other. “The main purpose of my art is to show the impermanence and volatility of the real world,” she says, adding, “We live in a world where different people see objects in their own fashion. I like to give my spectators many ways of seeing the diversity of the outside world.”

Throughout the month of April a new exhibition of Pavlenko’s artwork will hang at Lotton Gallery in Chicago. Her pieces will include Dance of Rosebud and Spring

Awakening, which show birds and flowers mixing with stones that are carved to include the same natural elements. Other paintings put the living subjects at the forefront, with the man-made nature serving as the background. In Winter Bouquet, for instance, two blue birds sit on a branch that is coming out of a blue vase; it is a still life combined with the nature themed wall.

“Gelena Pavlenko takes inspiration from nature and imagination from her dreams,” says Christina Franzoso, director of Lotton Gallery. “Romantic realism and dream-inspired surrealism play a game of peekaboo in her paintings.”

Pavlenko is able to work on her art 10 hours a day. She often hones in on the light and shadow within her compositions as those elements are able to convey the “tender beauty of nature.” She adds that nature “demands me to depict and share my feelings with others. During my journeys I love to observe dry grass, stones, leaves, flowers, birds, moss. It’s a world that surrounds us everywhere, every day. Such subjects seem to be of a second rate, but I like to make them the main characters of my artwork.”