ELISE ANSEL
Elise Ansel paints one image on top of another, turning the canvas as she works, transforming sequences of ideas and sensations into lush and shimmering rhythms. She stacks images like words; her paintings are thick with references and with narratives. The tension between what she describes as “the way you think and the way you see” gives her work its power. Ansel renders story—events and feelings—in passionate shapes and colors.
In college, Ansel studied comparative literature, but then she “took an art class and fell in love with it.” After graduating, she returned to New York, where she grew up, worked on films like Ghostbusters 2 in the art department, then as a painter’s assistant. She earned a master’s degree in painting at Southern Methodist University. Now she lives in Brunswick and teaches at Brown University, her alma mater.
