Elena Irving was born in Queens, New York. Her father was a fine artist with degrees in Chemical and Mechanical Engineering. His productive career included designs for radar instrumentation with the U.S. Navy during the Second World War, the first spinning machine for nylon with E.I DuPont and the first moon rocket launching at Cape Canaveral. Elena's mother Catherine was a career woman in New York fashion. At a young age Elena began writing poetry and carving sculpture. She won a scholarship to New York University, graduated from the New York Fashion Institute of Technology and became a fashion designer on Seventh Avenue. She continued to study painting and portraiture with master painter Mabel K. Hatt, who was compared to John Singer Sargent in reviews by the New York Times.

Elena married and raised two sons as she continued writing, sculpting and painting and joined her husband Robert Irving when he received a professorship to create a school of Communication at Iberoamericana University in Mexico City. The peasantry in Mexico touched Elena deeply and her time in Latin America began an intense period of work in sculpture, painting in oil and water color, drawing and pastels. Galleries in Mexico City sold her art throughout Latin America and Europe. She exhibited at the Museum de Arte Contemporaneo in Monterey, the National Museum de Bellas Artes and the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City and was appointed as Acquisitions Director for the Ewing Museum of Nations to collect art of young people for psychological study at the Museum. David K. Berlo, Then President of Illinois State University appointed Elena as the American Representative in Mexico for the “International Collection of Art”, sponsored by the U.S. State Department.

Elena Irving returned to her native U.S. and she settled in Los Angeles. She is a member of the Greater Los Angeles Press Club and a published poet. The recent book “Ways of Loving” is a new collection of her poetry.