Hello,

My name is Elena-Daniela Chetraru (nickname Dana , pen-name Artyela) and I am a visual artist that specialises in creative fine art photography.  I'm based in The Brecks, Norfolk, UK. I feel blessed to be surrounded by beautiful ancient woodlands and the huge Thetford Forest which became the main source of inspiration for my photographic work. My county is also famous for its big skies and atmospheric light and my love for its ever-changing beauty is obvious in many of my projects.

I chose photography as a medium to express myself in 1995, embracing both the film and digital format since then.

 It takes years to become a good photographer, it takes a long time to discover and refine your unique voice and artistic style, it takes a lifetime to become a proficient artist.

As stated above, all my creative work is inspired by the local nature and the skies above. It is done on the field using art glass filters, unconventional resin, paper props, diffusers, cinematic vintage lenses, art lenses and in-camera creative techniques, which I started developing and gradually master since 2010. From 1995 until then, I was aiming to accurately depict the world, but when an emotional family situation occurred, it made me turn to nature and look at it in a way different to the realistic manner I was used to.

The fundamental concept of my art is that of lyrical nature, which I use to express my poetic approach to the beauty of my natural surroundings, with a focus on a painterly and dreamy quality to the images I record with my camera.

 My photographic work has continually evolved over the years, and now I have a few main tendencies defining my approach to how I see nature and landscape as inspiration for my work.

A dominant tendency is towards creative artistic landscapes focused on small scenes with a serene feel. My mentor for developing this style is the American photographer Eliot Porter whose work I discovered while taking a photography course in Cambridge. I’ve spent a long time studying closely his photographs from the book Nature’s Chaos, published together with the scientist James Gleick. His photographs, full of colours, textures and details made me pay closer attention to small scenes, finding beauty in overlooked subjects from nature: grasses, moss, clouds, flowers, ferns, dead leaves, fallen trees, rocks, lichen, bark, thorns and weeds.

Here it is a quote that has been particularly influential for me for me from the Foreword of the book: “To most people, I am sure, the beauty of nature means such features as the flowers of spring, autumn foliage, mountain landscapes, and other similar aspects. That they are beautiful is indisputable; yet they are not all that is beautiful about nature. They are the peaks and summits of nature’s greatest displays. But underlying and supporting these brilliant displays are slow, quiet processes that pass almost unnoticed from season to season-unnoticed… Yet, how much is missed if we have eyes only for the bright colors. Nature should be viewed without distinction... She makes no choice herself – everything that happens has equal significance.”

Few of the images from the book which shaped my vision about nature are as follows:

• Evening clouds, Tesuque, New Mexico, 3 June, 1977
• Sorrel and yarrow, Oak Island, Maine, 26 June 1982
• Moss in bog pool, Seney, Michigan, 18 June 1973
• Details of a thorn acacia tree, Amboseli, Kenya, Africa, 16 September 1970,
• Vegetation detail, Calenturas, Mexico, 25 July 1966,
• Vine on tree trunk, Tortuguero Park, Costa Rica, 8 March, 1984
• Hey fern, Tamworth, New Hampshire, 8 October 1956
• Fallen tree, Great Spruce Head Island, Maine, 21 July 1974
• Sunset Clouds, Palmer Station, Antarctica, 18 February 1976
• Paramo, red flower, vaccinium, and lichens, Cerro de la Muerte Park, Costa Rica, 15 March 1984,
• Moss on rock, Roaring Fork, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, 10 October 1967
• Redbud and tulip poplar, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, 9 April 1968
• Dry tropical  forest  floor, Palo Verde Park, Costa Rica, 14 March 1984

A second tendency in my work is what I call pictorial expressive photography, focused on a personal response to an atmospheric scene. I developed this style based on my close connection to literature and History of Art and by studying the pictorialism movement. My images from this category have a softer focus, a painterly aesthetic and a dreamlike quality. I named my style “magic realism” as each scene where the realist elements are more evident, is always doubled by an infusion of magic which I create by using the power and the beauty of natural elements like rain, wind, soft light, golden hour light, blue hour light, mist, fog and haze.

The third main tendency is photo impressionism, inspired by the work of French impressionist and pointillist artists Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and Georges Seurat, and also by the Japanese watercolour paintings.

Claude Monet became an inspiration soon after a visit to The National Gallery, in London  in 2011, where I felt particularly drawn to the paintings Irises( 1914-17), The Water-Lily Pond (1899), Water-Lilies(after 1916) and Water Lilies, Setting Sun(cca1907). Two projects in particular – The Waterlily Pond and Liquid Scapes (unpublished on my website yet) – illustrate best my photographic approach similar to the style of these paintings.  Later on, paintings like Poplars(Wind Effect) (1891), Poplars at Givenchy, Sunrise (1888), influenced me to approach tree and forest/woodland photography in an impressionistic way, by using Intentional Camera Movement to create motion close to that depicted in his paintings.

Alfred Sisley’s paintings became an influence for me through the way he portrayed landscapes and scenes from nature filled with tranquillity, in either pale or stronger shades of green, purple, orange, cream, brown, dusty blue, cream and pink.

Pointillism started to interest me after a discussion I had with my daughter about this art style. I’ve experimented a lot until I found the right lenses and a way to develop this in my own work. A few images from my collection Nature’s Poetic Garden and the whole series Echoes, partly published on my website reflect this approach.

As a general feature, my impressionist work is focused on capturing the ever-changing light, shapes, mood, colour, patterns, movement and atmosphere.

Beyond all these influences, I am always open to new ways to approach nature.

I am also very much interested in abstract, experimental photography, based on concepts and non-objective representation of nature . This type of photography has a strong painterly quality, as it emphasizes colour, emotion and atmosphere rather than representing details from nature.

Last but not least is my preference for creative macro photography. I have developed a keen interest in this field after studying the work of famous American artist photographer Olivia Parker, especially those in which she approached macro as a style to  photograph found dead bugs she found in her house in the years of its renovation. Each photograph is an example of poetic fine art, metamorphosing the familiar into subjects with ethereal features.

Many of my images go in bespoke, handmade artist’s  photo books which I create and bind myself.