While American teens were worrying about their driver’s test, 17-year-old Elena Peteva left her Bulgarian home to become an artist in America. A short 15 years later Peteva is teaching Dominican students about design principles, and ways to really see color, shape, and line.
Her parents encouraged and pushed her to the best art schools in America and that is how Peteva landed at the Interlochen Arts Academy.
In the beginning Peteva’s strength was in drawing – she started formal lessons at age nine but success there spurred her desire to paint. It was not easy, “Initially I was horrible at painting,” she said.
Peteva’s family is artistic; her father is a writer, her mother is a classical musician, and her brother is an art historian.
She studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and then went on to Syracuse University for her master’s degree. Throughout her schooling she concentrated on figure painting and drawing. “I appreciated being able to focus, and really get the skills. The question though, was what to create,” Peteva said.
Her focus on figure drawing and painting helped nail down the basic skills that she acquired during her studies. As a student she worked from live models instead of photographs to understand and capture the true figure. Today, she still prefers working with live figures.
The example of her professors persuaded her to become a professor as well as an artist. The two vocations complement each other, she said.
“Some artists are hermits but others act of sharing because it energizes your work,” she said. “It’s wonderful to see students progress. It feels like not only their achievement, but yours too.”
In 2010 Peteva has been in three exhibitions, and has had her work published in three art books and catalogues. She creates several pieces to represent a series and show multiple ideas, which let the viewer develop their interpretation of the work.
For the “Legacies” exhibit in 2009 Peteva created a series of mixed media drawings based off 17th century Spanish artist Velazquez Pope Innocent X’s work. Her next exhibit opens March 4 in Philadelphia featuring drawings of open hand gestures. The drawings are suggestive, but symbolize the hands offering something. For Peteva, work takes while, she likes to take a step back and evaluate the detail and work through her image.
She was recently published in Manifest International Drawing Annual 5, a book of 72 artists’ work in print from across the world. Peteva’s portrait of her mother was published in the German art book called The Artist’s Mother in 2010. The publication featured artists from van Gogh to her favorite, Rembrandt.
“It feels great, I’m very happy about my mom being in it,” Peteva said.
Students are impressed with the first year professor’s knowledge.
Joshua Johnson, a drawing, painting, and sculpture major, praised Peteva’s knowledge of the human figure.
“Her knowledge knows no bounds,” he said. The specific knowledge of design skills has helped him in his independent study course. Peteva’s willingness and enthusiasm for student’s work is astounding, Johnson said.
“Often I stop by her office and she is almost always there with great advice,” he said.
In Peteva’s classes, she starts with the vision, and then moves to the creation. She teaches the fundamental skills needed to create. Peteva explained the process: “First one must learn what they see before creating it.”
Drawing and painting major Anna Skleba said that Peteva’s lesson on squinting one’s eyes to see the true shape and color of the object as vital to her success as an artist. “It’s weird, but now I walk around just seeing everything differently. Like a tree, I’ll see the leaves as masses of color and just think to myself, how I would go about painting it,” Skleba said.
Throughout out her career Peteva has been awarded three Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grants for her representational art. She felt honored she said to earn an international award presented to 45 artists annually. Without these awards some of her work may not have been created.
“Chicago is now my home,” Peteva said. She hopes to continue exhibiting nationally, and be able to exhibit in Chicago and New York. Despite these accomplishments she said she still feels like an emerging artist.
“I’m 32, I hope to have 40 more years in the classroom and the studio,” she said.
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