Elena Behrakis (b.1970; Lowell, MA. United States) is a Greek American visual artist who works primarily in oil on canvas, paper and board. Her highly expressive figurative works are characterized by their rich texture, energy, and visible brushstrokes and marks. Elena’s style of painting is intuitive heightening the emotion in her pieces. The works are her direct relation to insulation, strength, invisibility, radiance, and vulnerability within the female experience.

With an extensive training in classical figurative art from Boston University and Yale University’s Norfolk School of Art, Elena strives to grasp the essence of complex human emotions and physicality through color, light and gesture. She works in such a way that there is no opportunity to create a formula, as each mark is an unexpected reaction to her mind overflowing onto the canvas. Paintings are often turned on their sides to explore more surprising compositions and sometimes awkward fluidity of lines.

After graduate school, Elena stepped away from creating art and spent many years building several businesses within the beauty industry, as well as expanding her family. Prior to her break, her work was shown in galleries and shows throughout parts of the United States.

In 2024, Elena traveled back to her roots of artistic expression with an incredible urge to paint. Her mind was flooded with ideas, images, thoughts and ideologies. Shadows, landscapes, and figures started to emerge and dissolve into one another.

Late diagnoses in ADHD and Synesthesia play integral roles in the process of her work. The inquisitive, guttural, and instinctual ways she responds to each work allows for a pureness in thought and reaction. Repeatedly building up and then destroying each layer is an integral part of her process and allows for an excavation of the tangibility of each piece as well as the human soul. Inspired by the Bay Area Figurative, Nabis, Expressionist and Brut Art movements, Elena’s work challenges to dissect and navigate towards poetic allusions, the Ancient Greek philosophy of Eudaimonia, and the raw human emotions that fluctuate between lightness, substance, depth and darkness. 

Elena currently lives and works in Massachusetts. Her work can now be seen in exhibitions across the United States.

EDUCATION

Boston University School for the Arts. Boston, MA. 

• Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Painting 
• 1994-1996

Boston University School for the Arts.  Boston, MA. 

• Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in Painting
• Minor studies in Art History
• 1988-1992

Yale University Norfolk School of Art. Norfolk, CT.

• Summer 1991

EXHIBITIONS/SHOWS

The Persistence of Shadow, Group Show, Sims Contemporary Gallery, New York City, NY 2026

2025 Open-Themed Show, Las Laguna Art Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA 2026 

Storied: Narrative Art, Juried Show, ArtLink Contemporary Gallery, Fort Wayne, IN 2026

Paradise, Juried Show, Art Center Sarasota, Sarasota, FL 2025

2025 Fay Chandler Merging Art Exhibition, Boston City Hall Galleries, Boston, MA 2025

2025 small works, BIG TALENT, Las Laguna, Art Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA 2025

2025 Small Works Show, 440 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2025

Art Under the Influence of Women, Vincent’s Gallery, Mansfield, MA 1996

Gallery '76 13th Annual National Juried Exhibit, Valley College, Wenatchee, MA 1996

MFA Thesis Exhibition, Boston University Art Gallery, Boston, MA 1996

New England-New Talent Exhibition, Hera Gallery, Wakefield, RI 1996

The Horizon, group exhibition, Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL 1996

Small Works, group exhibition, George Sherman Union Gallery, Boston University, Boston, MA 1996

Young Talent Exhibition, group exhibition, Washington Art Association, Washington Depot, CT 1996

The Art of the Matter, Boston University Art Gallery, Boston, MA 1996

2nd Year Graduate Painting Exhibition, Tsai Performance Center, Boston University, Boston, MA 1995

1st Year Graduate Painting Exhibition, George Fuller Building, Boston University, Boston, MA 1995

Juried Exhibition of Works, First Expressions Gallery, Boston, MA 1995

Three Person Exhibition, Harbor Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA 1994

Open Studios, Rugg Road Arts District, Allston, MA 1994

Cultural Continuum: Contemporary Expressions by Hellenic American Artists, Whistler House Museum, Lowell, MA 1992