Arts And Culture Feature: Lena Gatsenko

Russia's Up and Coming Fine Artist: Lena Gatsenko *photographs of paintings are from the artist, confidently entrusted to the writer of this article*

Lena Gatsenko is a Russian painter and fashion designer and was educated at Kingston University in London, England.

Surreal? Expressionist? Modern? Are the first words that come into mind when looking at her eclectic and quintessentially modern art pieces.

Lena Gatsenko

According to Lena Gatsenko during an interview for this article, 'the bunnies are taking human faces, kind of hiding secrets behind an innocent appearance'.

Her artistic vision of mixing two different beings remind of us a modern great painter, Salvador Dali, who was able to mix two different things on creating masterpieces thus creating the surrealist painting imagery.

Lena Gatsenko

Do these paintings remind you of Alice in Wonderland? A girl with a bunny in a colourful world? This surrealist art painting by Lena does remind the viewer the contemporary mixture of Andy Warhol's silver screen painting method popularised by his Marilyn Monroe painting and Salvador Dali's use of surrealist impression, because a girl's head is replaced the bunny's head?

This is not the first painting that features a beautiful lady and a cute bunny. This stems back to the Italian Renaissance Art Movement in which one of Leonardo da Vinci's paintings 'Lady with Ermine' features a lady holding a ferret. This feature has been present as art progresses, in 1769 Jean-Honoré Fragonard painted, 'A Woman With A Dog' using oil paint on canvas, which can be found in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Lena's use of imaginative creativity and inspiration from Renaissance has led her to painting this modern art quintessential masterpiece.

Lena Gatsenko

The Art in the time of Soviet Russia was defined by simplicity and reflected by idealism filled with romanticism showing wealth and happiness. This painting reminds us of the classic art in the 20th century drawing similarities to Andy Warhol who's origins comes from Slovakia. Although Lena's playful use of reindeer with a mask shows futuristic vision of branching a new art movement, an evolution of Warhol with the colour blending of Cezanne, Duffy and Matisse.

Edgar Degas (formerly De Gas) has stated that 'art is not what you see, but what you make others see'.

A touch of surrealism with creative use of minimalism and visionary blending of colour similarly to Henri Matisse and Andy Warhol - could Lena be the mother of a new art era in 21st century? Could she bring the new art movement and inspiration of Russia? We will find out in the next chapter.