Artist's Statement
“I have passions which have been passed down to me by my forebears. A love and fascination for plants was my paternal granddad’s gift to me. He was a gardener. The love of animals I inherited from my other grandfather, the vet. I delight in astronomy and everything celestial just as my grandmother did. And the fossils and stones I like so much to collect seem just as mysterious to me as the skies. My etchings embrace all this. Coming from a family of artists the knowledge and skills came easily to me. My parents’ studios were my playground and making art was their way of life. Watching my dad spreading the hair-thin lines across a copper plate and weaving images with a needle-point was a bit like magic and this gave me a love of detail and precision. Kneading clay in mum’s studio and applying brilliant glazes on terracotta awoke my feeling for colour. And that was all I ever needed.”
Nina Zelenko trained at the School for Design in Ljubljana and then went to live in West Berlin to further her artistic education at the Hochschule der Kunste. Upon returning she took up studies of Art History and English Language at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. She has been a freelance artist since 1983 and has exhibited in over eighty exhibitions in Slovenia and worldwide. For the past three years she has been Head of the Artist’s Counsel and the Exhibitions Coordinator for the Fine Artist’s Society of Ljubljana.