Hi, my name is Lena Nechet. I am a European fine art painter in California. I make mostly tangible artwork with archival materials in environmentally friendly studio settings. My preferred art genres are abstract portrait and zen-brush gesture.

I care about the beauty of composition and the exactitude of expression. I like to represent ideas and feelings in a limited color palette or black and white. If I have a concept, it usually involves an interaction between ethics and aesthetics. I love honest ambiguity that invites observing life from different angles simultaneously. In my paintings, you might find optically curious elements, complex facial expressions, dimensional transparency, as well as erotic suggestion and figurative abstraction.

My main sources of ideas are meditation, mathematics, the beauty of perception, plants, people, the elegance of movement, and maintaining peace in the turbulent flow of existence. I paint either directly from life, or from synthesized memory gained in prolonged observation.

Hundreds of my favorite artists influenced me, almost all of them lived in other times and places. Their works hold me up to a standard I respect.

My current media include charcoal, acrylic, and aquarelle, both transparent watercolor and gouache. I painted in oil and practiced academic drawing since I was six.  In the 2000s, I switched to water media. I grew up surrounded by books with art reproductions. Photography since 13 sharpened and sped up my compositional decision-making. And then videography cleared my sense of rhythm.

With fine art, I do things that are impossible or way too hard to accomplish with other tools. If a photograph stops the moment in time, a painting flattens the time and distance dimensions into your space. This layer is a new method of seeing your reality, produced by another brain. This is how I understand it.

In most stages of painting, I think more than I paint. And after almost finishing each piece, I stare at it for days and weeks in different ways. Then I add concluding accents in the hope that you can feel what I find to be worth experiencing. I am far from being a struggling artist type, I paint from joy. My images must be able to become ever-resilient springs for your mind to motivate me to start and finish them. My highest honor is when you choose to look at my painting not just once.

Perhaps, my pictures could establish a mind connection between us. Art is one of my most sincere ways to communicate. For now, I cannot be fulfilled without practicing it, I tried.

I appreciate your attention!

Lena

My art signature includes my seal L∃N∀, "exists for all" now.