Works
  • Abstract painting on a rectangular canvas with bright colors in wide brushstrokes and globular blotches.
    Elise Ansel
    Esther V, 2022
  • Abstract painting on a rectangular canvas, bright and dark colors with wide brushstrokes and smooth surface texture.
    Elise Ansel
    Lucretia's Dance III, 2022
  • Abstract painting with dark colors on a rectangular canvas. Wide brushstrokes and smooth texture.
    Elise Ansel
    Obsidian Butterfly II, 2022
  • Abstract painting with bright colors in wide brushstrokes on a rectangular horizontal canvas.
    Elise Ansel
    Rosy Fingered Dawn, 2022
  • Abstract painting with thick strokes of warm and bright cool tones brushed across the surface.
    Elise Ansel
    Repressed Sky, 2020
  • Abstract painting with deep dark background, bright cool tones at the forefront with bursts of warm tones surrounding the center.
    Elise Ansel
    Hybrid II, 2020
  • Abstract painting with thick bands of warm and cool tones splashed across the surface.
    Elise Ansel
    Esther, 2020
  • Abstract painting with a dark background and warm and cool tones brushed across in a figurative manner.
    Elise Ansel
    Judith I, 2020
  • Selene II
    Elise Ansel
    Selene II, 2020
  • Abstract painting with heavy brushstrokes of warm and cool tones concentrated throughout.
    Elise Ansel
    Selene I, 2020
  • Abstract painting with a dark background with splashes of warm and cool tones brushed across in a figurative manner.
    Elise Ansel
    Judith III, 2020
  • Abstract painting with a dark background, thickly applied brushstrokes of warm and cool tones and bursts of bright hues.
    Elise Ansel
    RR Flower Detail II, 2019
  • RR Flower Detail I
    Elise Ansel
    RR Flower Detail I, 2019
  • Oil Study II for Generosity
    Elise Ansel
    Oil Study II for Generosity, 2019
  • Abstract painting with a dark background and thick bands of warm and cool tones painted across the surface.
    Elise Ansel
    RR Flower Detail V, 2019
  • Abstract painting with a landscape background, thickly applied brushstrokes of warm and cool tones throughout.
    Elise Ansel
    Bacchus and Ariadne III, 2016
Exhibitions
Biography
I make large scale abstract paintings and digital prints that are derived from historical art. My work is about reclaiming, re-visioning and re-presenting paintings that were created at a time when women were seen as objects rather than equal participants in the creative dialog. The paintings I work after are distant mirrors which I interpret through the lens of contemporary practice. I use gesture, improvisation, and painterly notation to translate Old Master imagery into a contemporary pictorial language. My paintings begin with specific Old Master paintings as a point of departure but then resolve into abstraction as the representational content is transformed and ultimately eclipsed by focus upon color, composition and the materiality of the paint. Linear, rational readings are interrupted. The historical paintings I work after become structures on which to hang paint; the soundness of these structures capacitates great improvisational freedom. The real subject becomes the substance and surface of oil paint, the variety of its applications, and the ways in which it can be used to celebrate life. Alternately, it could be said that the real subject matter is (pictorial) language itself (and the gender bias therein).
 
Elise Ansel was born and raised in New York City. She received a BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University in 1984. While at Brown, she studied art at both Brown and RISD. She worked briefly in the film industry before deciding to make painting her first order medium. She earned her MFA in Visual Art from Southern Methodist University in 1993. Her work has been widely exhibited in the United States and in Europe. 
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