Portfolio Art and Travel My paintings contain bright colors, simple lines, tropical temperament and influenced a lot by my other passion - travelling. GALLERY 1 - MODERN AND SIMPLE. GALLERY I always was fascinated by the construction and managed to stand long hours behind the tilers or plasterers and watch how they work. The fact that the whole thing is not yet fully complete was giving me a special feeling. I was trying to imagine how the interior could look in the final stage. Which colors, materials, furniture, decoration could be used and… which image could be hanged. So the first collection of my paintings appeared. They are fundamentally very simple with only two-dimension and minimum colors. Most of all I enjoy making paintings "tailored", adapted to the size and color of a particular area. The first painting for this collection was created in the year 2000. GALLERY 2 - TURN ME LEFT, TURN ME RIGHT. GALLERY Five years ago I was living in Suriname for half a year. Thanks to that a series of Caribbean dancers paintings appeared. Salsa, meringue and a great joy of life - it's all there. Nightlife and a dance culture in South America is something really big. Every night in Paramaribo, capital of Suriname, one of the clubs had the door opened. Dancing in Suriname, as well as in many other Latin American countries usually starts from one o’clock at night and continues till the morning. In the morning everyone goes to work. How do they cope? Easily. Dancers sleep in the evening before the event and next day everything repeats again, just instead of Zsa Zsa Zsu you visit Starzz or Havana Lounge. I have a few African paintings as well, which were influenced by my resent trip to Uganda and Rwanda where I’ve spent 6 weeks. I was surprised that Africa is not only about poverty and suffering, but also that people still cheerful and love having fun. I’ve named the paintings HOT TONTO NIGHT and LILI OF RWENZORI. Tonto is the name of the local beer, which is made from bananas. Rwenzori is a mountain range between Rwanda and Uganda. Lena in Uganda GALLERY 3 - CARIBBEAN. GALLERY In 2012 I realized my dream - a really long trip to South America. I decided to go there alone and for a longer period of time, for 6 months. I was thinking that a shorter journey would not help me to go deeper into the local culture and mentality. I bought a ticket to Sao Paulo in Brazil. I knew that by the moment Brazil was experiencing not only boom economical, but a cultural boom as well. I wished to meet local artists, which I succeeded. I even had the opportunity to work for a while in the art studio of Giulerme Kramer and Evandro Angeramiho in Sao Paulo and to participate in events of the Cultural Center "Tomada Kultural". It was a great experience. A month later I was continuing my trip through Bolivia to Peru. In Lima, Peru, I have visited my friends whom I met in Suriname. We were spending hours in coffee shops enjoying ice-cream, watching the ocean and talking about everything. Ice-cream in Lima was unbelievable. It was made from fresh tropical fruit. A lot of taste and a lot of inspiration! The painting TODOS LOS HELADOS was born… There were many exotic fruit in South America that I’ve never seen before. I was using every opportunity to taste them. So the second ice-cream painting RICO Y DELICIOSO appead. Todos Los Hedalos, acrylic on canvas, 90x90 cm Sorvetas do Amazonia, acrylic on canvas, 90x90 cm SORVETAS DO AMAZONIA (Amazon ice-cream) has for a change a sign in Portuguese. The words like Jabuticaba, Camu Camu, Jenipapo or Guanabana don’t mean anything else but names of fruit that grows along the Amazon or ice-cream made from these fruit. The idea for this picture came from Manaus, Brazilian city on the banks of the Amazon River, where I’ve spent two weeks. I'd love to visit this place ones more as just a couple of weeks for tasting everything that grows in the Amazon, is simply too short time. I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the city, which experienced it’s greatest glory in rubber fever period in the beginning of the last century, and currently is just a quiet and sleepy place where life goes slow. Picture DULSAO DO BRASIL is also was inspired by Manaus. This time it is a coffee painting. I liked the evening atmosphere in Manaus, when people sit outside right in the center near the famous Teatro Amazonas and drink their coffee or cocktails slowly giving much attention to how they are dressed. The women had their best clothes having hair decorated with Amazonian birds feathers. They looked stunning! I could not resist to buy some feathers and palm stones jewelry as well. I still have it stored deep in the wardrobe as being decorated with Amazon feathers in Czech republic I'd probably look very and very weird. GALLERY Click to see full screen LENA KUDRNOVÁ Was born in Moldova, but spent her childhood in the Ukraine, Germany and the Tuva Republic which is close to Mongolia. After high school, she was accepted to the Biology department of the Tomsk University in Siberia, a year later she transferred to Odessa, a city on the Black Sea coast where she continued studying Marine Biology. While being an university student she began to work evenings at the casino. This fundamentally affected her life and opened the opportunity to work in the Czech Republic and later in Great Britain, Suriname and Gibraltar. Although she lived all over the world as a home she considers Czech republic where in a total she spent for about twenty years. Travelling is still her big passion and inspiration for her other interest – painting. She developed a distinctive style, which contains the South American temperament, bright colors and tropical atmosphere. Her paintings own collectors from Czech Republic, Germany, France, Great Britain, Brazil and the USA. FACEBOOK Check out Lena on Facebook! KROP.CZ Visit her website