Elena Zolotnitsky was born in Moscow. She graduated from the State University of Cinematography in Moscow in 1986 with the MA in Fine Art and Animation. Until 1989, when she left Russia, Elena worked as a creative director in animation production, a freelance illustrator and a poster designer. She also started her career as a painter.
For the last 25 years Elena Zolotnitsky has been professionally recognized by major American Art Institutions like Communication Arts, American Society of Publication Design and Society of Illustrators. Her art appeared on the cover of New York Times Book Review, 7x7 San Francisco Magazine, Baltimore Magazine, Architectural Digest, American Art Collector, Ritz-Carlton, Atlantan and numerous editorial publications across America and in Russia.
"When I was 6 or 7 years old growing up in Moscow, some 30 years before the experience made its way into the consciousness of my journey, I liked to “play secrets”. As an only child I had to occupy myself somehow and that game was as good as any because I could easily do it on my own.
It involved wrappers for chocolates. The ones that you’ve managed to consume of course! The better chocolates – the more intricate were the wrappers. The best were the ones with the picture in the middle (it could even be a tiny replica of some famous Russian masterpiece hanging at Tretyakov Gallery) and the silver lining. After spending hours folding them, still smelling of chocolate, just right, completed with the silver design of the lining leaf, you had to hunt for another essential element of a “secret”. That would be a piece of glass. The beer bottled ones, amber in color, were the most magical. Then you had to bury the folded wrapper with the glass on top in the shallow grave of the playground’s dirt. That was a “secret”.
The magic happened when the young “artist,” on all fours and with her nose close to the ground, started to push the dirt away with a single finger in a slow circular motion, clearing the tiny window of colored glass…. What a transformation! In the first shock of discovery it takes you a while to comprehend what you are actually seeing…..Then it sinks in: a mystery of the familiar….and the feeling! Of wonder, of revelation!
I think that all my life I have been chasing that feeling – the mystery to be discovered. That instantaneous shift of reality, the recognition of magic"
