Elaine Hruska knew she wanted to be an artist at an early age. Due to extensive travel, Elaine found herself building a successful international import export business. Over the years, Elaine attended evening classes at the Art Students League of New York and the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. She continued her art education through workshop studies under nationally recognized pastel artists. Traveling the world on business, Elaine never left home without her sketchpad tucked inside her briefcase, allowing her to slip away and capture the very essence of the world around her. After many visits to Japan, Elaine began to understand and appreciate the Japanese celebration of the beauty of nature, the prime source of inspiration in Japanese visual arts and literature. Observing the Japanese artistic sensibility and how it is an integral part of daily life had a profound and long-lasting effect on her philosophy and artistic endeavors. "I became influenced by beliefs intrinsic to Shintoism, which embraces the spiritual power and energy of nature and compels me to search for the individual spirit and personality of each tree, plant and flower," says Elaine. Capturing the spirit as well as the “personality” of the landscape she is painting, Elaine’s pastels depict beauty of the deepest kind. Elaine creates her captivating pastel paintings using the technique made famous by the Impressionists masters. Instead of blending the pigments, the French artists applied unmixed colors to their canvas either in layers or side by side, letting the viewer’s eye do the “mixing". Elaine embraces this labor-intensive layering technique in order to attain vibrancy and brilliance yet retains the delicate subtleties so admired in Impressionism. Known for capturing texture with the use of her signature rich color palette, Elaine is proud to have her paintings part of art collections throughout the world. When it became time to focus solely on art, enchanted by its charm and beauty, Charleston was chosen as her home base; and Elaine became active in its art community, serving on the board of the Charleston Artist Guild from 2006-2008, and President from 2008-2009. Elaine is honored to be a member of the prestigious Pastel Society of America.