Elena Zelenina
New York, NY
Mixed media artist. Raised in studios of Russian masters. Himalayan pilgrim. Hidden gems in every layer. NAWA Award recipient. Art Completes You.
Message5D Systems (or Dimensions)
Life unfolds through many layers and dimensions, and this collection explores the invisible systems that shape our experience of reality.
The paintings emerged intuitively. The process felt very similar to what I experience while working on my Conversations with God series, a state of curiosity and discovery where the outcome is unknown. Each brushstroke becomes a question. Each color a possibility. I often find myself asking: Will this tone help express something I am only beginning to understand?
Painting is a dialogue between intuition and awareness.
Through contemplation I began to recognize that these works reflect five interconnected life systems that influence how we perceive and navigate the world:
Logic — the structures of reasoning and order and is based on current belief system. Rigid
Emotions — the inner currents that shape our responses
Spiritual cognition — beliefs, insights, and convictions that guide our sense of meaning and open us to new possibilities.
Time — both linear time and the psychological experience of time
The Unknown — the mysterious dimension that continually invites exploration
Logic — the structures of reasoning and order and is based on current belief system. Rigid
Emotions — the inner currents that shape our responses
Spiritual cognition — beliefs, insights, and convictions that guide our sense of meaning and open us to new possibilities.
Time — both linear time and the psychological experience of time
The Unknown — the mysterious dimension that continually invites exploration
Together, these dimensions form a living system through which human consciousness moves and evolves.
Autobiography of an Artist
Every painting in this collection represents a moment or aspect of my life. Change is inevitable and sometimes scary, but once you accept and embrace that change, something beautiful emerges. These paintings are parts of my story.
Conversations with God
My spiritual journey began when I was twenty-two years old, during my pregnancy with my son. At that time I felt a deep need for protection, something beyond the physical world, something sacred and unseen.
This search led me to study different religions and spiritual traditions. I discovered that while they share profound similarities, they also reveal fundamental differences in how human beings perceive the divine and how the divine might perceive us.
These discoveries opened a space for intense inner dialogue: conversations with God, or perhaps with the many faces through which the divine speaks.
The paintings in this collection are visual reflections of those moments. Each work represents a prayer, a question, or a response experienced during these conversations. They are fragments of a personal spiritual journey, where faith, doubt, wonder, and revelation meet on the canvas.
Dancing Lines
I enjoy movement. I enjoy dance. I enjoy watching instruments move to create music.
After studying the 18 Vedic Principles of Creating Visual Artwork, I became a certified instructor of that method. I began this collection of dancing lines that express endless creativity.
When I start a painting, I never know what it will be, but I do know when to stop. I stop when that moment is fully expressed. It's not accidental.
Forms: Floral, Natural, and Urban Landscapes
This collection explores the idea that beauty and creativity flow through all forms of life and environment.
In India, flowers are sometimes described as expressions of the divine because their colors, textures, and fragrances seem endlessly inventive. When my daughter returned from her first trip to India at the age of twelve, she brought back a drawing of flowers that filled the entire page. On the back, she wrote: “People are like flowers. All beautiful. All unique.”That simple insight stayed with me.
Since then, painting flowers has become a way for me to celebrate the uniqueness and beauty present in all living forms. Over time, this exploration expanded beyond flowers to include landscapes, natural elements, and urban environments.
When observing nature closely, I often see the same flowing logic appear in human architecture. Cities, buildings, and streets can reflect the rhythms of life, much like the organic forms found in the work of architects such as Gaudí.
It feels that the creative source is the same, but it is transmitted in different ways.
It feels that the creative source is the same, but it is transmitted in different ways.
Each work in this collection becomes a visual reflection on that idea.
Glass World
The world is full of shattered reflections, yet none of them can truly cut the soul that learns to see.
This collection explores the possibility of moving beyond fear by looking at the fragile architecture of fear itself.
Broken glass appears sharp, dangerous, and immovable. It freezes us in place. We stop moving, afraid that one step will cut us. Many of the walls we build in life are made of this invisible glass, reflections of anxiety, memory, and inherited beliefs.
But fear is often an illusion.
When we look closer, when awareness grows, the sharp edges begin to soften. The glass melts. What once looked solid reveals itself to be only shadows and reflections. The danger dissolves, and the world opens again.
In these works, broken glass becomes both barrier and transformation. Light passes through the fractures, creating new patterns, unexpected beauty, and pathways forward.
The viewer is invited to move beyond the illusion of danger and rediscover freedom to see that the waters we feared to enter were always safe to swim.
India Impressions
I have been to India 11 times and traveled through the Himalayas and South of India, lived in the ashrams, did yatras, prayed in Temples, meditated on the Ganga River, and completed with my past and opened up my future, made friends all over the world. I will never forget the first look at the red Indian soil and the feeling that I was home at last. Once, I spent a month in Kumbh Mela, the biggest spiritual gathering on the planet; I saw saddhus and devotion of regular people, and new dimensions of life opened up for me and in me. I am beyond grateful to India for all it gave and keeps giving, for Hinduism and its vast knowledge, for the strength I found that I did not know I had. Forever in Love with this county and its people.
Oneness
All my art is about Oneness. But three years from 2018 to 2021 were a massive test for me in living Oneness, finding strength in it, radiating it regardless of what was happening. Some of the sweetest events were part of these three years, like a magical wedding celebration of my son, trip to India with my mom right before her 80th birthday and half a year before her passing, seeing my mom dancing in the ashram in India, seeing my guruji hugging her and comforting her, seeing her crying because her heart was melting with love, watching my daughter's graduation were a part of these three years. I met new friends and felt as if we had lived many lifetimes together. And so many more... On the suffering side, my mom passed, my dad died, my Vincent (best dog ever) left the body in my arms, my mother-in-law passed, and we had a pandemic where I spent several months in isolation. Oneness does not discriminate between good and bad. Our ability to see deeper than surface-level good or bad is how grasping of Oneness feels. Our ability to feel connected when time or space separate us is Oneness. Our ability to connect beyond this Life is Oneness.
Multiple lines in my paintings create one piece, and I used watercolors for this collection because I wanted the fluid feeling allowing for many layers of interpretation. Various events dance together in Oneness, creating an illusion and liberation from the illusion depending on the depth of our being.
Completion is showing it all to you...
Women Stories
In a world where there is such disrespect and disregard of women, where their intricate and fascinating design is taken for granted and abused, it's our responsibility to educate our sons and men on their protective role and educate women on their true essence.
Until child marriages are irradicated and called by their true name, "rape," the world will not know peace. Until men realize that anger towards a person different from them is weakness and not strength, female abuse will continue. Until our daughters and mothers feel that they need not prove their right to do what they want with their bodies and souls, there won't be new beginnings for this world.
Raising a woman's self-esteem by loving her and telling her that she is lovable is what this collection is about.
