FOUND in TRANSLATION

Painter Elise Ansel interprets the Old Masters with a modern female voice

“I took this work by Titian and I turned it upside down.”  Elise Ansel is sitting in her studio in Portland’s West End, the walls covered with her large-scale abstract paintings. Pinned by some are small reproductions of works by the old masters: Titian, Michelangelo, Tiepolo. She picks up an image of Titian’s Tarquin and Lucretia in one hand, rotates it and sets it alongside a catalog photo of her painting Scarlet. At first glance, it is hard to recognize the relationship between the two works. Linger on them, however, and the corresponding compositional structure becomes clear. Ansel has captured the essence of Titian’s painting—its color, light, movement and energy—in a few broad, gestural brushstrokes.