Elena Sarni has been an artist since her conscious life began.  Born in the now-vanished Soviet Union, she considers her Russian cultural inheritance a vital aspect of her intellectual biography...

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Remarkable technically and abundantly imaginative, Elena Sarni creates striking paintings filled with resonant images that comment on contemporary life and human nature.  In her engrossing new show, entitled “Still Life Landscape,” which opens December 2 at the Grant Gallery, she uses the still life as a way to explore our unconscious.   

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Sarni developed a series of distinct styles. as a whole, her work prophesies a reconciliation of the oppositions that define the cultural milieu in which she has lived. in early twentieth-century art - art nouveau, 'decorative' art (klimt) and even architecture (from gaudi to schechtel) - she saw the potential of integrating perspective depth and the planar approach to the painting surface."

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She's an artist who's unafraid to touch on biblical themes and turn them into something modern, sensual and compelling.

Lot and his daughters, David and Goliath, Judith with the head she has just cut off, they are all mixed-media work, executed in a most interesting way: Sarni uses oils, dry pigments and acrylic in layers, but the end result is a smooth surface, with the flesh tones so real, you'd think the paintings were photographs.

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