For the first time I saw Elena Bria’s paintings in 2017. Dedeeshattuckgallery gallery had exhibition of Paintings by young artists from St. Petersburg. Back then Elena was a student at the Academy of Arts of Saint Petersburg.
This summer Dedee contacted me that one of the artists was in America and was visiting her.
I jumped at the chance to talk to a talented artist. I myself am far from art, but I admire gifted people who create paintings, music, poems…
So, we got together for talking, walking, and exploring New Bedford.
It turned out that Lena spent 10 days in New York. She said: “To be honest, I’m right shocked by New York (in a good way). It’s an incredible city. It seems to me that it cardinally changes destinies of people”.
I asked her to explain. Here is the answer to your attention:
It’s all about the scale, the monumentality of what is happening. For example, the Brooklyn bridge. First of all, I was covered with goosebumps when I first saw it. This giant structure made by people like you and me. When I climbed on it and saw all the nuts and bolts in the vicinity, one picture did not come out of my head.
I don’t know how it really was, but at the time I imagined it like this…
There was a certain John Augustus Roebling (the designer of this bridge). He was commissioned to design a bridge that would connect Brooklyn and Manhattan. And here he sat in the evening, in the twilight at the window of his apartment, drinking a glass of delicious red dry wine and he thought, “let me make this bridge like this”.
I imagined how he came up with a plan for the future bridge. And after all he essentially didn’t differ from us, he had so same 2 hands and legs, he slept, ate, laughed and might be sad.
In short, the idea that something like this could “be born” in the head of a person, as if opens up horizons to you. You begin to understand how high the human mind can “fly”. I even got the feeling that there are no boundaries. You just have to let your mind understand and feel it.
And this beautiful feeling did not leave me all 10 days while I was there..
to be continued …….
