Artist Spotlight: Ekaterina Ermilkina, Art In Motion

In continuing the Maplewood Division of Arts & Culture mission of ensuring inclusive and accessible art for all, this week’s featured artist is Ekaterina Ermilkina, with Art In Motion. Residents can safely enjoy public art while outdoors, maintaining physical distance.

New Transformations [Oil painting]
Art In Motion
Location: Maplewood Train Station Tunnel

"Architecture first drew me in and became a subject of my painting while I was in graduate school…When I first came to the U.S., the experience of seeing skyscrapers for the first time had an enormous imaginative impact. The modernist style of the buildings seemed to demand a more modernist artistic approach, and I was inspired to create my urban series."
— Ekaterina Ermilkina

Born in Russia, Ekaterina Ermilkina now lives and works in New Jersey. She grew up in the beautiful city of Yalta on the north coast of the Black Sea, where in 1985 she enrolled as a student to the School of Art of F.Vasiliev, graduating in 1991. After her first introduction to fine art in Yalta, in 1992, Ekaterina Ermilkina moved to Saint Petersburg, Russia. In 1998 she received her MFA from State Art and Industry Academy. The unique beauty and rich culture of the city inspired her to paint cityscapes.

In late 2005, Ermilkina moved to the U.S. Her artworks have been featured in various solo and group exhibitions in international galleries and museums: The New York Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hunter Museum of American Art, Artspace Warehouse Los Angeles, David Parker NYC, Bluestone Fine Art Gallery Philadelphia, Art Leaders Michigan, Kunstwarenhaus Zurich, Art & Lef Netherlands, RFA Decor Florida, Neiman Marcus, Arche Stores NYC etc. Notable collectors include Kelly Clarkson, Los Angeles, CA, Bruno Jovanovic, France. Her dynamic artworks vibrate with color and motion, casting a candied haze across the cityscape.

Ekaterina Ermilkina’s original abstract fine art paintings are created using a skillful combination of applying and removing oil paint with a palette knife on canvas. Her inspirations are the expressionistic magic skylines of big cities like Manhattan, Philadelphia, or Chicago filled with colorful skyscrapers. The urban scenic views are abstracted and rich with vivid and textured layers. Ermilkina’s emotional architectural patchwork and mosaic cityscapes radiate a life of balance and positive energy.

Ekaterina Ermilkina’s medium is oil on canvas, and working with color and texture is an ongoing exploration. Ekaterina says, “Modern pointillism has been a revelation for me. Using a palette knife, I apply distinct dots of color and build a pattern, which ultimately is only seen as a pattern when the dots are blended in the eye and mind of the viewer, from a distance. Stippling is very time-consuming, but allows such subtle gradation of color, depending on how far apart the dots are placed, and creates great depth and dimension. I love how these techniques can be so expressive; how the textures allow me to convey, for example, the inner life of a building. Capturing the interior nature of subject matter that may seem, on its surface, prosaic and everyday is what I am after.” 

Ekaterina shares her experience on working with the Mapelwood Arts Council and Art In Motion: "I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to create a new painting for a public project, Art in Motion, in Maplewood. I've never seen the train station tunnel with an art gallery before. It's so amazing to walk through it every day. I really hope that this fills people with a positive mood for the whole day and pleasantly relaxes them upon returning home from work. New Transformations is one of the paintings from my new urban series inspired by New York City."

www.ermilkina.com 
info@ermilkina.com
Instagram @ekaterinaermilkina
http://www.facebook.com/eermilkina/
twitter.com/Ermilkina

Other Work by Ekaterina Ermilkina:

Skyline Sunset [48 x 30 Oil]

City in the Sky [46 x 36 Acrylic]

A Rainy Day In New York [36 x 60]

Chrysanthemums [18 x 18 Oil]

Lilacs [18 x 24 Oil]

Lovers Under Umbrella [18 x 19 Oil]

Brooklyn Bridge [18 x 18 Oil]

Ekaterina Ermilkina

Art In Motion, presented by the Maplewood Arts Council (MAC), is a collection of eight paintings that hang on the tunnel walls of the Maplewood Train Station underpass. MAC received 100 applications solicited from artists living along the Morris and Essex train line. 100% of donations for Art In Motion went to paying the artists for their work, and for the installation and maintenance of the paintings. Major sponsors for Art In Motion: The Able Baker, [words] Bookstore, Pollock Properties Group, and Michael Choy & Shannon Moffet. Big thanks to NJ Transit, and Maplewood’s Department of Public Works.