Eleanor Mill
I am a watercolor and graphics artist. Foremost I work in a realistic manner. The center place of my paintings belong to cityscapes.
My hometown, Saint-Petersburg, is one of the most brilliant cities of the world. Its abundant elegance and cultural heritage were suffusing my artistic way with inspiration.
My full artistic education has started with the School of Arts for Kids and has lasted for 12 years when I graduated as a specialist in Graphics Design.
My sweetest memories refer to the years in the Secondary School of Arts (that is called today the Lyceum of Arts named after Boris Ioganson affiliated to the Russian Arts Academy). It well deserves to be listed among the best schools in the world! Within 3 years in the architectural class we have learned to be responsible, self-consistent and skilled in having a way to study. These skills benefit in life and rewarding career opportunity.
I have been exhibiting since my student times. That was the first time when I have been recognized and received my special award for the project «Live worthful in a rhythm of metropolis». That time I was a 4-year student of the Institute. Nowadays I am a prize and my name is in the shortlists of many collective exhibitions in and outside Russia.
Being a watercolor and graphics artist, I use to work with paper, graphite, black-chalk, ink and watercolors. Watercolors is my unrivalled material. It shows itself unpredictably and detests mis-action. It’s watercolors definitely that saturates paintings with light and breath of life. Graphics is my greatest passion. Here one’s emotions become clean and colors – useless, while aesthetics of forms revives.
There has been a veritable firestorm of emotions each time I choose the next subject. As it’s crucial to reflect my own impressions – immediate emotions appeared at the certain moment and at the certain place. Triggering this action, I oftentimes modify reality. I am not steady in painting the right shapes but I create an illusion of reality, move structures and joint views. Having used hyperbola, I keep the image.
Cityscape – is the first key of my artwork. It is a stream of life with its currents. Cities and metropolises are centers of culture. That is why I find inspiration in traveling. There is a great opportunity to discover many-sidedness of our huge world – meeting new people and different cultures. It opens one’s mind and helps in self-understanding.
My works set in series. Generally, they are devoted to different countries. However, my favorite graphics series is called «Oblivion». It tells the story about magnificent ruins, speechless witnesses of human history, which have been keeping memories traced from the Creator’s idea to the moment of crash of last stone.
Artist Statement
I am the daughter of my time.
I was born into an atheistic society. The special significance of the concepts of sex, age, profession, religion, nationality, race, sexual orientation was not imposed on me, so these things do not matter to me even now. I grew up in a troubled period when people in my country experimented with lawlessness. Those who chose to do what was right became the losers, while winners were the ones who took the easy way. I live in a world where Art has ceased to be Artful, it has become Artificial. Enlightenment is not profitable. Marketing is the most valuable of the professions.
I was lucky to be born in St. Petersburg, one of the best cities in Russia. Although the pages of its grave history are quite dark, it has retained some real treasures. In rare hours of sunlight, this city can inspire. A trip to the Hermitage museum is like is an antidote for me, as it helps not to lose faith that people are capable of greatness.
My work is a balance on “the edge of a coin with two sides”. This is the search for harmony between nature and man. Is nature against man or man against nature?
I use traditional techniques. When studying space, I do a lot of road sketches as artists did in their Grand Tour. I look for material that will express my emotions better at a given point in time and space. Returning to the workshop, I reconstruct the image bit by bit. Here I already work on my own reality, which I bring into being. I visualize my imagination: what if people from a big city disappear? How ephemeral are we before the hundred-year-old giants created by our fellow tribesmen? Do we complement the greatness of Nature? This is one side of the coin – a song about beauty and might.
On the other side of the coin there are vices. I’m not at all sure that man is the crown of creation. Experimenting with simple means of visual expression, I concentrate on human relationships. Through simplistic, symbolic forms I try to show the nature of our actions. We believe in our infallibility, but we cause endless pain to each other.
I balance somewhere in the middle where harmony should be sought.