Worlds emerging in the paintings of painter Elena Karpenko

Worlds emerging in the paintings of painter Elena Karpenko Painter Elena Karpenko lives and works in Kaunas, Lithuania. She has been interested in art and has been creating for a long time, but when choosing a profession, her interest in psychology and psychotherapy prevailed. As in the author’s profession, so in her work, the desire to depict the world of people remains, and questions of existence remain important. After a break in the author’s work for some time, she has now returned to the world of art since the COVID-19 pandemic. She became more seriously interested in drawing and painting when she discovered the Moscow art school “Matita” online, which offered online classes. At this school, the author chose a realistic drawing course. While studying at this school, the author gained more self-confidence as a painter. This opened up a new world of creativity for the artist. And after completing her distance learning studies, the author continued to be interested in various drawing and painting techniques during her studies at the realistic drawing studio of the Kaunas Faculty of Art Academy of Vilnius University with the artist Donatas Inis. She also delved into the secrets of painting in the art studio ARTYN. Improving one technique, changing another. Currently, two areas dominate the author's work: painting and dotting. She has already participated in exhibitions in collective art studios with artists and is currently preparing for a personal exhibition, which will take place on June 5 in BUSINESS PARK AUŠRA, Kaunas. In painting, the author also considers the emerging human motif, his existence, his world, his emotions and eternal, philosophical and existential questions important. In contemporary painting, we increasingly see not only the representation of images, but also the construction of alternative realities. The work of the painter Elena Karpenko opens up as such a territory - like an intermediate space between memory and dream, between the inner world of a person and visual reality. Her paintings do not so much depict reality as they create new worlds with their own rhythm, mood and sense of time. Looking at the artist's canvases, it becomes obvious that painting is perceived here not as a documentary tool, but as a living organism capable of growing, changing and involving the viewer in an emotional and symbolic journey. The symbolic journey of the soul is important in the author's work.These are unique existential and philosophical worlds created by the author. Elena Karpenko's painting language is characterized by a sensitive relationship with color. Color layers in her works function not only aesthetically, but also semantically - color becomes a sign of emotion, state or even subconscious impulse. Rich blue, earth tones or unexpected bursts of light in the paintings create the impression that the visible image exists between two states: between decay and birth, between peace and inner tension. Such coloristic worlds are created to maintain the inner life of the artist’s works – it seems that the canvas is pulsating, breathing and constantly changing in the eyes of the observer. Summing up the work of the painter Elena, we can state: An important aspect of Karpenko’s work is the treatment of space. The artist abandons rational perspective and the principles of traditional spatial construction. Instead of a clear compositional logic, she chooses fragmentation, layering and visual uncertainty. Therefore, the viewer in the painting cannot feel like a passive observer – he becomes like a traveler through an unknown territory, where landmarks are constantly changing. Such a painting strategy brings the artist’s work closer to the logic of a dream: objects here can lose their materiality, figures – dissolve in the environment, and time – lose its chronological sequence. From this I can say that the main connection between the author’s worlds is figure and color, the themes of time that connect the author’s worlds. Art critic Gabrielė Kuizinaitė