Elena
Radeva
Master Printmaker — CMAQ
Founder of Skylar Press
Master Printmaker — CMAQ
Founder of Skylar Press
Elena Radeva grew up in Bulgaria until the age of 8, before immigrating to France. She earned a degree in Performing Arts in Lyon, then moved to Paris to study architecture at ENSA Paris-Malaquais, where she completed a scenography internship at the Musée d'Orsay.
She completed her studies in Montreal with a Master's in Design at the Université de Montréal — discovering letterpress at the Musée de l'Imprimerie. It felt inevitable: letterpress brought together everything she was looking for — the rigour of the gesture, the beauty of craft, the precision of print.
She founded Skylar Press in 2018. Her studio now moves between Montreal, where she creates her personal artworks, and Knowlton at Leporello, where she continues her stationery collections. In 2026, she has turned her practice decisively toward personal creation and artist collaboration.
Master Printmaker
Conseil des métiers d'art du Québec — CMAQ
Lecturer · École de design · Université de Montréal
Education
BA Performing Arts · Lyon
BA Architecture · ENSA Paris-Malaquais
MA Design · UdeM Montreal
Scenography Internship · Musée d'Orsay · Paris · 2014
Founder · Skylar Press · since 2018
Lecturer · UdeM · 3D Expression & Colour · since 2015
Practice
Linocut · Letterpress · Ceramics
Artisan printing · Limited editions
Studios
Montreal — personal artworks
Knowlton — Leporello · stationery collections
The relief in paper, lino, ceramics — Elena doesn't create from nothing. She reveals what was already there but had been overlooked. A seemingly insignificant detail, yet one that speaks to the soul. Like standing before a great work of art, the gesture helps draw out what we feel but cannot name.
The repeated gesture is not mechanical — it is meditative. It is in the cadence, in the incessant return of the same movement on the material, that an emotion finally takes hold. Elena does not seek efficiency. She seeks the moment when time expands, when hand and surface become one.
Her travels, architectural details glimpsed in Plovdiv, Paris or elsewhere, a crack in a wall, the grain of old wood — all of this enters the work without announcing itself. The repeated gesture is the path. Emotion is the destination.
The studio
The tools
The material
Everything begins with carving — wood, lino, metal. Every mark made with the gouge is final. Elena may spend several weeks on a single matrix.
The ink is mixed by hand. The same motif tells a different story depending on the colour — this is where intuition enters.
The Heidelberg, the Chandler & Price, the Vandercook — three presses, three characters. Each imprints its own signature on the paper. The moment matrix meets sheet is singular, every time.
Each print is unique — perfect in its smallest imperfections. Every edition is numbered, signed, accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.