Graphic artist and watercolorist, Eleanor Mill, had a passion for art since her early childhood. Her parents encouraged her aspiration and gave her any art materials that were available at the time. “I spent hours at my desk experimenting with colour paper, pencils, paints and glue,” she recalls. “Moreover, I was lucky to be born in St. Petersburg, one of the best cities in Russia.Our famous Hermitage museum and other outstanding monuments of Russian history are just at hand.”
Eleanor’s education is steeped in the arts. She spent three years at the Elementary Art Education at St. Petersburg Children’s Art School, “Alexandrino.” For her secondary education, she attended St. Petersburg BV Johansson State Academy Art Lyceum at the Russian Academy of Arts, Architecture department. She obtained her higher education honours degree in Graphic Design after studying at Baltic Institute of Foreign Languages and Intercultural Cooperation from 2006 to 2012.
Eleanor’s portfolio shows both detailed drawings along with realistic painting. She enjoys both; however, she admits that she doesn’t love both equally. “The graphic art is my real deep passion. It’s a pinnacle of all the art forms for me. I feel all the aesthetic sophistication in this media,” she says. “Senses sharpen and emotions intensified: concentration is drawn to the magic play of light and shadow, admiration for the form of an object. I can call it the deepest and the most sensual of the arts.”
In most cases, Eleanor’s paintings begin with a drawing. “But if I workon plein air, I skip a preliminary drawing and focus on catching the moment, my first impression from the spot. The precision is less important. I usually start my sketches straight with media (watercolour, ink, pastel…),” she says.
In describing her artist style, Eleanor says: “In general, my style can be referred to as Realism. The main feature of my artwork is that the image doesn’t always correspond to reality. I can alter it a little.” She describes being inside the scene and feeling the world spatially. She doesn’t stand motionless. “I am astir. Each step changes the picture in my eyes. So, I try to collect these views in one. The perspective may not exist in real life, but the artwork makes no doubt in its accuracy. Maybe I need to call my style ‘the completed realism’ or ‘the thought-out realism’.”
Eleanor incorporates architectural structures and buildings in her work. She says that buildings and constructions once created by people but now fallen into oblivion have an inspirational value. “These giants towering over densely populated cities preserve the memories from the moment of their creation until the last stone drops off their walls. Houses and cities represent the dream of permanence but at the same time show that nothing lasts forever.”
Cityscape is the main motive of my creative work, Eleanor says. “It expresses the flow of life, which is always in motion: it changes, falls into oblivion, and is replaced by the new. It is not a secret that the more highly developed a civilization is, the faster is the pace of life and the further away the past drifts.” She adds that her work is a balance on the edge of a coin with two sides. “This is the search for harmony between nature and man. Is nature against a man or a man against nature?”
As part of her creative process, Eleanor goes hiking and live sketches as artists did in their Grand Tour to capture the things that she admires. “Sketching while travelling is a special kind of exploration of a new space, a subjective opinion expressed by the artist through different styles and accents. An ordinary photograph captures the moment, and a work of art is an opportunity to view the world through the eyes of the artist,” she says. “Similarly, sketches represent my subjective opinion and capture my personal impressions. Then I go back to the studio and work on large formats, using a stack of sketches, which are best at retaining my emotions. The things that I create become a part of me.”
Inspired by her travels and discovery of a diverse world with its people and culture, Eleanor believes that every city has its special portrait features, which an artist captures through his or her subjective opinion and displays to the audience. “I look for material that will express my emotions better at a given point in time and space. Back at my workshop, I reconstruct the image bit by bit. Here I already work on my own reality, which I bring into being. I visualise my imagination: what if people disappear from a big city? How ephemeral are we before the hundred-year-old giants created by our fellow tribesmen? Do we complement the greatness of Nature?”
Elanor is currently working on several series, including portraits of cities in Germany, Belgium, Estonia, Croatia, and Ruins. “There are many plots of United States, France, and Italy still hidden in my travel albums,” she says. “And I have an ambitious plan to make an ‘art expedition’ to explore the ruined abbeys of Great Britain. Stone by stone.”
To see more of Eleanor’s work, visit www.melibertine.com/.
