Olena Zvyagintseva is a Ukrainian artist who creates refined and sensitive paintings that reflect the world around her, especially the village where she spends much of her time. Whether Zvyagintseva is showing us a young girl splashing in water, bathers at the beach or flowers bunched in a vase, distinctive shapes combine with rich, textural surfaces—the result of using a painting technique that is both additive and subtractive—her figural groupings, floral still lifes and portraits have an overall abstract appeal. But what gives her art its truest depth and its greatest individuality is her complex use of color: at times so many shades of a single hue are present that they become impossible to count.
Zvyagintseva says: “I think that my interest in weaving together stems, leaves, blossoms, spiky grasses and various herbs of so many colors originated in my childhood. My granny liked to knit and used many different balls of colored wool. When I began to knit, I liked to make patterns with the threads of different colors. The more complex, the more interesting it was for me. The same is true with painting and I'm curious to tangle these elements on the canvas.”
Olena Zvyagintseva is a graduate of the prestigious Academy of Art in Kiev. She has exhibited in Ukraine and her art is in numerous private collections in the United States, and especially in Atlanta, where her reputation has blossomed. TEW Galleries has represented her since 2000
