Elise Ansel’s work references historical masterpieces, transforming their visual language into a fresh iteration of Abstract Expressionist sensibility. Her physically charged paintings, at once forceful and lyrical, recapture the spontaneity of Franz Kline, the vivid palette of de Kooning and Richter, the intense often disquieting visual poetry of Joan Mitchell and Frank Auerbach.
For Ansel,the act of painting represents an alternative way of seeing, allowing her to engage in an intimate dialogue with her source and to comprehend it on a more profound level. By translating her discoveries of spiritual intentions, psychological and emotional impact into abstraction, Ansel’s paintings succeed in capturing glimpses of the original content. As a result, her works not only serve as a point of departure from the Old Master context, but also as a celebration of [its] values, knowledge and techniques…. [1]
Born and raised in New York City, Elise Ansel received her BA from Brown University and her MFA from Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Ansel has exhibited throughout the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe. Her paintings are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCAK), Krakow Poland, NYU Langone, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and the Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences. Elise Ansel lives and works in New York City and Maine.
[1]Buhmann, Stephanie, “Dissecting the Familiar,” 2018.