Elise Ansel continues in the tradition of abstract expressionist artists who mine the emotive potential of color and gesture. At times, her work hints at representational imagery through compositional structures grounded in historical painting. In this work, a study for a larger work of the same year, Ansel arranges the color and composition of the painting with large block-like brushstrokes. Drawing inspiration from The Rape of Europa by Titian, Ansel distills the color, depth, and landscape of the original into a few charged brushstrokes. Ansel was included in the 2018 Portland Biennial, and featured in an exhibition at the David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University this past summer. In 2016, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art presented Distant Mirrors, an exhibition of her paintings and drawings. Ansel has exhibited widely in the United States and England.
