Tatiana Gelfand

Love / Lust

Gel pen on paper

From the "DREAMS and Other Explanations" series.

“Having lost my home and all sources of income as a result of the pandemic, I found myself sheltering-in-place in my friend's tiny trailer in rural Arizona. With no money or space for creating large-scale works, I began to work with what I had. A small black-paper notebook and a set of cheap gel pens. I began to tell stories through a series of drawings I call ‘DREAMS and Other Explanations.’

In this series, I draw on my past as a Zen practitioner at Tassajara Monastery, my extended participation in Peruvian Shamanic ceremonies, and on my lucid dream state to communicate the depth and capacity for love and connection that exists within each human being.”

— Tatiana Gelfand

About the artist

Tatiana Gelfand

I am queer, Soviet immigrant from Moscow, Russia who fled with my parents from an anti-semitic totalitarian regime. I am currently a nomadic multi-disciplinary artist. While trained in Photography and Painting, when I realized my passion for storytelling, I trained myself in theater arts and spent much of the past 15 years as a director/playwright. Of course, I also continued to tell stories through visual art. This merging of dramatic art forms and the 2-dimentsional art medium gave me a unique perspective on what it means to communicate with color, form and shape. I see my drawings and photographs as capturing the space between consciousness in motion.