In the studio at the top story of her home in the Wildcat Hills, Yelena Khanevskaya has a quiet place where she can sit with her cats, create designs to decorate clothing and add dabs of color and mood to her paintings.
Overlooking the North Platte Valley, it’s a long way from Russia, where she spent her youthful summers on a farm in a rural village with her grandmother and the rest of the year with her parents in the city, learning art within the demanding discipline of the Soviet-era education system. Little in her upbringing suggested that her adult career would take her to a job teaching drawing and painting in a small community college half a world away. Art has been a continuous thread in her life.
“I’ve been doing every sort of art since early childhood, even in daycare,” said Khanevskaya, who’s a virtual one-woman art department at Western Nebraska Community College, teaching art history, drawing and painting. “We had a time allocated to arts and crafts.”
In addition to academics, students were encouraged to explore other interests — including, in her case, music, writing for the student newspaper, cross-country skiing and even sharpshooting.
“I explored a lot of things outside public school,” she said, including learning to play the domra, a four-stringed Russian instrument resembling a lute. Her parents encouraged her interest in art, she said, while her grandmother influenced her to overcome her shy disposition and emulate the elder woman’s determination and strength.
Teachers encouraged her during her teen years to enter art school, a formal training program designed to prepare students for college-level studies. She was accepted into the program and took on more than 10 hours per week in after-school study of drawing, painting, sculpture and related topics.
“You didn’t end up in those places if you weren’t serious, because it was a lot of work,” she said.
After graduation from high school she was accepted into a highly selective art program at the university in Oryol (which means “Eagle” in English), nearly 400 miles from Moscow and a ride of several hours by train. She was one of only 50 students admitted that year. Women in the program were encouraged to study teaching instead of pursuing a studio career.
Unlike elementary school, where she felt isolated by her interest in art, she found the university surrounded her with students of similar talents. During 11-hour days she advanced her study of art and academic subjects while continuing her shooting, sewing and knitting and joining fellow students in creating animated films using clay figures.
She married while attending the university and was widowed soon after when her husband was killed in an accident, leaving her with an infant daughter. Still, she was able to earn a master’s degree.
Initially, she worked in a factory that produced Russian folk art, and later in a studio setting painting on clothing and other fabrics.
“What we produced was sold, but not personally by me,” she said.
Khanevskaya later met and married a Nebraskan, now her ex-husband, and found herself without a job in Scottsbluff, a remote town in a remote American state. She taught art classes for children, which revived her interest in drawing and painting, while making new friends and improving the English skills she’d begun learning in school as a child.
“It was very liberating not to have an instructor standing over me and telling me what to do. Sometimes the instructors were kind of harsh,” she said. “I didn’t feel I had a special artistic vision.”
She enjoyed her first taste of real success as an artist when friends encouraged her efforts and she began to make sales and produce occasional exhibits. Eventually, she taught art in an adult education class at WNCC, and in 2000 she was hired as an interim instructor. In her classroom, students strive to produce images of flowers, plastic fruits, pots and other props in a colorful, paint-spattered environment of artworks, easels and whiteboards.
Part of Khanevskaya’s inspiration to return to the art world emerged from the sweeping skies and imposing bluffs of her new prairie environment.
“I came from a place where there were lots of trees and it was very green and humid,” she said. “This was a very alien landscape. The formations here — the monument — were so interesting to me. I painted a lot of sunsets and skies.
“Nebraska skies are very special. The colors and the cloud formations here are very unusual.”
She once ran half-marathons and did her training outdoors. She still does a lot of walking and hiking in the hills around her home, finding inspiration in the bluffs, pine forests, deer, turkeys and other birds. She has a favorite tree outside her window, which inspires her by the way it captures light during the changing seasons. She’s seen the tracks of passing mountain lions.
“We had a bobcat go through there,” she said. “It ran up on the ridge.”
Initially, Khanevskaya was influenced by impressionists, by well-known artists in her homeland and by Russian folk art, including icons, religious paintings and other works of art common in Eastern Orthodox Christian churches. She’s interested in painting human figures and, more recently, wildlife. She’s says being an artist herself makes it easier to teach art to others.
“I definitely think I’m a better teacher because I’m an artist. I believe that to become a good teacher you have to practice that craft and grow,” she said. “It helps me to see my painting in a different light.”
She worries less now about her skill level and devotes her energy to producing the images she can see in her mind.
“It’s liberating once you know the craft. That’s why I appreciate the education I got,” she said. “But every artist has to continue growing. I don’t know if I can say I’m there.”
To continue improving, she sometimes works on projects that are experimental, in order to develop a specific technique or recreate a moment of light.
“A lot of it is just practice. Not every painting is thoroughly planned,” she said. “I visualize a lot of things. Sometimes it feels great just to get it out.”
Even after two decades in western Nebraska, she remains inspired by its ever-changing subjects.
“When I first came here, the landscape seemed empty and rugged, so different from where I’m from,” she said. “I was used to the lush greenery and trees and forests. I’ve come to appreciate the different qualities of light. There’s a lot more wildlife around here than you first imagine.”
Overlooking the North Platte Valley, it’s a long way from Russia, where she spent her youthful summers on a farm in a rural village with her grandmother and the rest of the year with her parents in the city, learning art within the demanding discipline of the Soviet-era education system. Little in her upbringing suggested that her adult career would take her to a job teaching drawing and painting in a small community college half a world away. Art has been a continuous thread in her life.
“I’ve been doing every sort of art since early childhood, even in daycare,” said Khanevskaya, who’s a virtual one-woman art department at Western Nebraska Community College, teaching art history, drawing and painting. “We had a time allocated to arts and crafts.”
In addition to academics, students were encouraged to explore other interests — including, in her case, music, writing for the student newspaper, cross-country skiing and even sharpshooting.
“I explored a lot of things outside public school,” she said, including learning to play the domra, a four-stringed Russian instrument resembling a lute. Her parents encouraged her interest in art, she said, while her grandmother influenced her to overcome her shy disposition and emulate the elder woman’s determination and strength.
Teachers encouraged her during her teen years to enter art school, a formal training program designed to prepare students for college-level studies. She was accepted into the program and took on more than 10 hours per week in after-school study of drawing, painting, sculpture and related topics.
“You didn’t end up in those places if you weren’t serious, because it was a lot of work,” she said.
After graduation from high school she was accepted into a highly selective art program at the university in Oryol (which means “Eagle” in English), nearly 400 miles from Moscow and a ride of several hours by train. She was one of only 50 students admitted that year. Women in the program were encouraged to study teaching instead of pursuing a studio career.
Unlike elementary school, where she felt isolated by her interest in art, she found the university surrounded her with students of similar talents. During 11-hour days she advanced her study of art and academic subjects while continuing her shooting, sewing and knitting and joining fellow students in creating animated films using clay figures.
She married while attending the university and was widowed soon after when her husband was killed in an accident, leaving her with an infant daughter. Still, she was able to earn a master’s degree.
Initially, she worked in a factory that produced Russian folk art, and later in a studio setting painting on clothing and other fabrics.
“What we produced was sold, but not personally by me,” she said.
Khanevskaya later met and married a Nebraskan, now her ex-husband, and found herself without a job in Scottsbluff, a remote town in a remote American state. She taught art classes for children, which revived her interest in drawing and painting, while making new friends and improving the English skills she’d begun learning in school as a child.
“It was very liberating not to have an instructor standing over me and telling me what to do. Sometimes the instructors were kind of harsh,” she said. “I didn’t feel I had a special artistic vision.”
She enjoyed her first taste of real success as an artist when friends encouraged her efforts and she began to make sales and produce occasional exhibits. Eventually, she taught art in an adult education class at WNCC, and in 2000 she was hired as an interim instructor. In her classroom, students strive to produce images of flowers, plastic fruits, pots and other props in a colorful, paint-spattered environment of artworks, easels and whiteboards.
Part of Khanevskaya’s inspiration to return to the art world emerged from the sweeping skies and imposing bluffs of her new prairie environment.
“I came from a place where there were lots of trees and it was very green and humid,” she said. “This was a very alien landscape. The formations here — the monument — were so interesting to me. I painted a lot of sunsets and skies.
“Nebraska skies are very special. The colors and the cloud formations here are very unusual.”
She once ran half-marathons and did her training outdoors. She still does a lot of walking and hiking in the hills around her home, finding inspiration in the bluffs, pine forests, deer, turkeys and other birds. She has a favorite tree outside her window, which inspires her by the way it captures light during the changing seasons. She’s seen the tracks of passing mountain lions.
“We had a bobcat go through there,” she said. “It ran up on the ridge.”
Initially, Khanevskaya was influenced by impressionists, by well-known artists in her homeland and by Russian folk art, including icons, religious paintings and other works of art common in Eastern Orthodox Christian churches. She’s interested in painting human figures and, more recently, wildlife. She’s says being an artist herself makes it easier to teach art to others.
“I definitely think I’m a better teacher because I’m an artist. I believe that to become a good teacher you have to practice that craft and grow,” she said. “It helps me to see my painting in a different light.”
She worries less now about her skill level and devotes her energy to producing the images she can see in her mind.
“It’s liberating once you know the craft. That’s why I appreciate the education I got,” she said. “But every artist has to continue growing. I don’t know if I can say I’m there.”
To continue improving, she sometimes works on projects that are experimental, in order to develop a specific technique or recreate a moment of light.
“A lot of it is just practice. Not every painting is thoroughly planned,” she said. “I visualize a lot of things. Sometimes it feels great just to get it out.”
Even after two decades in western Nebraska, she remains inspired by its ever-changing subjects.
“When I first came here, the landscape seemed empty and rugged, so different from where I’m from,” she said. “I was used to the lush greenery and trees and forests. I’ve come to appreciate the different qualities of light. There’s a lot more wildlife around here than you first imagine.”
Resource http://www.starherald.com/news/pride/people/yelena-khanevskaya-brings-artistic-talent-learned-in-russia-to-rural/article_46799452-30be-5bec-9981-513500d20e29.html
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