Artist Info
Elaine Classen
Elaine Classen was born during the Great Depression on a farm in rural Saskatchewan. Her early life was punctuated by farm chores, time spent observing the open prairie, and a modest primary education in a one-room school. Further education meant being sent away to one the many convents throughout Saskatchewan, so Classen traveled to Bruno as a teen to attend the St. Ursuline Academy. The sisters, and particularly Rita Berthold, who would become an inspiration and life-long friend, provided a rich and stimulating learning environment that nurtured Classen’s love of painting and motivated her to earn a teaching certificate from the University of Saskatchewan and attend summer art programs at Emma Lake. She taught grade school in Saskatoon and Swift Current before moving to Alberta with her husband in 1957, where she continued teaching until raising five children became a priority.
In 1967, Classen completed a ceramic program through the Faculty of Extension at the University of Alberta. She worked for 20 years as a functional and sculptural potter and taught classes in her home studio. Although she found pottery rewarding, Classen returned to the University of Alberta when her children were grown to study painting, explore new ways to express herself artistically, and escape the restrictions of being a craftsperson. She earned a BFA in 1987, at the age of 57. Her large format landscape-inspired abstracts employ rectangles as vehicles of colour and sometimes reveal a combination of paint and clay, which gives texture to the canvasses. Although she has not prioritized the marketing or sale of her works, Classen has exhibited regularly in Edmonton and around Alberta. She hangs work gallery style in every room of her Edmonton home—including the bathroom—to suggest that, as long as they are beloved, one can never own too many paintings.
