Bio

Yelizaveta Masalimova was born in 1986 and immigrated to Connecticut from Kiev, Ukraine with her family in 1991. For her bachelor studies, she attended the Lyme Academy College of Fine Art in Lyme, Connecticut, where she earned a BFA in Sculpture, and was the sole recipient in her class of the Adams Academic Four-Year Grant.  At Lyme Academy she studied with Master Draftsman Deane G. Keller, and was greatly inspired to explore the printmaking medium by Master Printer James Reed.  Her most recent work is primarily in drawing and printmaking, as she works on completing her MFA in May 2012. 

Artist Statement

My work explores themes of collective struggle and uncertainty in the presence of a shattered, unforgiving world.  I am fascinated with the way that labor and pain can resonate through history, and shape the memory of the past, as well as the direction of the future.  Creating drawings and prints, I implement the fluid media of charcoal and ink for their ability to support an evocative and ominous space.  Depicting fragments of a surreal narrative, I attempt to connect pieces of a shared melancholy within a sinisterly familiar setting.  Caught in an endless transition and lost within a forgotten dream, the forms and bodies in my images are consumed by the harsh burdensome atmosphere that surrounds them.  My figures are adrift in a perpetual void of doubt and engaged in visceral interactions that evoke a common human fear, longing, and desperation.  With my images, I hope to express a deeply felt emotion that language fails to describe.