Today we’d like to introduce you to Elena Lipkowski.
Hi Elena, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I have always been creative, studying advertising in college and working in graphic design for many years. I was born in Los Angeles but followed the call for exploration and new places. Eventually, I settled in Austin and have lived here much of my adult life. Austin is a great town — smart, creative, hip, friendly — back then and still now. It was here that I dove deeper into my creativity. I learned fine art welding and blacksmithing here. I earned a graduate degree in art history at UT Austin. I love the exploratory twists and turns of learning new things and am continuously stretching backward in time and forwards in technology with my interests.
But as is so often in life, I found myself at a crossroads and picked the sensible path. And so, the last fifteen years of my work-life has been spent at a desk occupied with business tasks. More recently, I found a bit of room in my schedule to bring creativity back. Leaning heavily on my long-ago graphic design skills and sensibilities, I began working with my travel photographs. When I began my new art adventure, I had recently returned from Istanbul, Turkey. My head was filled with memories of a place that literally sits on layers upon layers of civilization and art.
Back home at my computer, I found myself simplifying and burnishing those images until only the most essential aspects remained. Then I would add other layers back into the composition. Some of these layers were purely digital, others were based upon millennia-old artisanal traditions. Each work is a recreation of the memory of place and time. My artistic process is a digital breakdown-then-rebuilding of images which, coincidentally, is very similar to how our brains store and retrieve memories.
Of late, I have been feeling the need to connect more physically and tangibly with my art process rather than purely digitally. I have a lifelong love of printing and paper. This year, I am exploring fine-art printmaking, using my digital art files as a starting point. Reaching even further back to childhood lessons from my mother and grandmother, I have a deep respect for needlework and textiles. I am now adding needle, bead, and thread embroidery to my digital collages to create mixed-media originals. The last few years as a new-media and mixed-media artist have been the most fulfilling yet. I continue to reach forward in curiosity and backward to reclaim my personal history.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Originally, I planned to share my art with the online world. I set up a website and launched it in March of 2020 — just as the world was changing for all of us. Covid was upon us. We shut everything down and wondered what would happen next. Like so many of us, I did not know what this meant for my fledgling art adventure. After all, much of my focus was on a celebration of travel and exploring new people and cultures.
Travel was impossible, and we couldn’t know for how long. Art seemed irrelevant to what life had so suddenly become. And who would want to look at art anyways? It didn’t feel very useful to be making art while our hospitals were overflowing, and refrigerator trucks acted as morgues.
Then as I pondered all my studies of art throughout history, I became convinced that art always has its place. Art is always relevant, even during the most difficult times of human history. So, my new mission became to send beauty out into the world. I increased my emphasis on mindfulness and breathwork, aiming for art that brought feelings of calm and tranquility to my art viewers. Happily, that is the feedback that I get from people over and over again. Even now, as Covid has become less of an obstacle and I have resumed travel, I am grateful for the perspective that I’ve gained.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am primarily a new-media artist, meaning I create art wholly in the digital realm of jpgs and tiffs on my computer. I think of my medium as the energy of light and pixel. My art aims to capture life’s journeys, starting with humble cellphone photographs and digital scans of my hand-made art. More recently, I have begun to physically incorporate embroidery, seed-beading and other needlework onto the digitized surface to create mixed-media images containing tangible and physically grounded elements.
As you look at my art, what you are seeing is the manipulation of layers and layers of images. I use one software to achieve one goal, then another to achieve the next. I toss my files back and forth until everything melds together into a cohesive singular visual statement. While fairly abstract, I seek to retain elements of an identifiable subject.
I want the viewer to have a sense of peace and tranquility in the energy of the image. My digital collages and mixed-media works have been described as strongly graphic, delicately layered, and visually grounded in a soothing sense of calm.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I’ve always been very goal oriented but have learned to temper my expectations. I aim to be prepared and to be available. Beyond that, it’s out of my hands. Life rolls along without concern for anyone’s plans. That said, there is always an opportunity to recast goals to whatever the current reality presents. I’ve learned to not be too quick to judge something as good luck or bad luck. Sometimes a terrible thing will happen, and it jolts me onto a new path that ends up being exactly where I need to be. This applies equally for me in life and business and art. Being open to what comes can result in some very rewarding outcomes (if you let it).
Pricing:
- Open edition archival fine art prints on paper in a variety of sizes, from about $100 to $500
- Open edition archival fine art prints on satin metal sheet in a variety of sizes, from about $100 to $800
- Open edition archival fine art prints on wood panel in a variety of sizes, from about $150 to $2500
- Open edition archival fine art prints on non-glare acrylic in a variety of sizes, from about $200 to $3500
- Mixed-media originals, and single edition archival fine art prints, pricing upon request.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ElenaLipkowski.com
- Instagram: @elena.lipkowski
- Facebook: @Elena.Lipkowski.Fine.Arts
Image Credits
Elena Lipkowski
