Elena Rufova

Elena Valentinovna Rufova started working as a free painter in the early 90-s, after studying in the art school, as it goes, armed with painters job skills. She was twenty-something, overflown with energy and painters temper. Her early still- life paintings and portraits are boldly dabbed, textured,...

Elena Valentinovna Rufova started working as a free painter in the early 90-s, after studying in the art school, as it goes, armed with painters job skills. She was twenty-something, overflown with energy and painters temper. Her early still- life paintings and portraits are boldly dabbed, textured, there is a juicy pictur- esque meat and it is dabbed so fruity and with such verve that it is obligatory to see right from the beginning a promising artist. “Winter Town” and “Portrait of a Mother” dated 1994 meets the definition above. Young artist fits on his talent in different modes. Works with powerful dark spots. Tries to mix up rich dabs with airy tinges. And so on.
An exceedingly captive mentor could have told her back then that she spreads herself thin. And he could have almost got it right. She wanted both the lyrical mood and the gloomy, rigorous state of mind at the same time. Since different emotions flowed like water, metropolitan moderation didn’t limit her. She has never been and never became a big-city gal, though she moved to Moscow in the beginning of the new millennium. In her works there were never a shad- ow of coldly intellectual or detached cynical inflexion. She is pedological and childly forthright. And why would she shy away when she wants to tell a lot and yet more? So she attach to her picturesque paintings of medium sizing (one me- ter-plus height and meter-something wide) some sow, quotation, lines of a solid verse writer. As if she is a 19th century maiden, doing views in an album as a keepsake and couldn’t do it without some quotation or clever idea on the fields. It’s touching and not-met-like. And this is what fits her well. This is her chemis- try.