Elina Aho-Brennan
Basic information
b. 1981, Lappeenranta
visual artist, trainer/ coach in visual arts
Residence: Helsinki
Contact information
Email: aho.elina@gmail.com
Artist’s Statement
Elina Aho-Brennan´s (b. 1981) paintings and drawings take the viewer to the embodied experience of the world and the body. She researches the embodiment of emotions, the perception of movement and the physicality of painting and drawing in her artistic practice. Her multifaceted background in the arts, psychology, neuroscience and movement practices give innate depth to her work.
She works both in drawing with self-invented charcoal tools, pencil and ink, and in painting (oil on paper and canvas, and mixed media works). She is very interested in the perceiving and experiencing part of the human psyche, and the body and mind- connection. Her abstracted paintings of the lived, bodily experience is represented simultaneously, side by side, with drawings of the human body and movement. She works with professional dancers while drawing the human body and movement.
In her art works she strives to attack the canvas with embodied energy, sometimes soft and delicate, sometimes more aggressive and physical, while being very much in the present moment and the action of painting becoming like free association. She is also striving to obtain a very direct, physical, almost raw sense of human experience. She is interested in portraying the life forces in the canvases and her works can be felt via their tactile and material qualities, full of life, even erotic forces, and aggression.
“My passion lies in exploring the interplay of line and color, movement and stillness, embodied sense of the world, life drawing and painting, and experimental inquiry of the subject.”
— Elina Aho-Brennan
She works both in drawing with self-invented charcoal tools, pencil and ink, and in painting (oil on paper and canvas, and mixed media works). She is very interested in the perceiving and experiencing part of the human psyche, and the body and mind- connection. Her abstracted paintings of the lived, bodily experience is represented simultaneously, side by side, with drawings of the human body and movement. She works with professional dancers while drawing the human body and movement.
In her art works she strives to attack the canvas with embodied energy, sometimes soft and delicate, sometimes more aggressive and physical, while being very much in the present moment and the action of painting becoming like free association. She is also striving to obtain a very direct, physical, almost raw sense of human experience. She is interested in portraying the life forces in the canvases and her works can be felt via their tactile and material qualities, full of life, even erotic forces, and aggression.
“My passion lies in exploring the interplay of line and color, movement and stillness, embodied sense of the world, life drawing and painting, and experimental inquiry of the subject.”
— Elina Aho-Brennan
