Color Forms

In Color Forms, I've gone all-in on pure abstraction, tracing the boundaries of possibility in color, form, line and texture. The impetus for this work was a desire to inhabit corners of mind and impulses of body not yet explored.  Instead of setting out to make a specific image, I allow my instincts for color and composition to navigate the canvas without an intended outcome, allowing the feelings and thoughts that cross my mind to seep into the work subconsciously.  References to landscape, biology, nature and art history may be discerned in this work, but overall, the images are open-ended—an invitation to revel in the pleasures of paint, to find joy and sustenance in visual experience. 

—Ellen Goldschmidt

Art is like birdsong:  It’s made of patterns, inflections, shadings, 

shifts — all things that have emotional and perceptual impact, 

even if we can never really translate their meanings. 

—Jerry Saltz, Art Critic

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Rich Land Between

The question of how people remain connected, over time and despite differences, is a matter of significance.  This quiet, largely invisible material stands in contrast to the blaring, polarized outpourings that dominate the public square. While politics is consumed by the theme of  irreconcilable differences, what can be learned from a look at the intimate phenomenon of longterm connection?

People in longterm relationships are living paradoxes, united and divided at the same time.   

Living together and learning to cooperate despite differences of opinion, personality, race, politics, class, frequent misunderstandings, and more, is the challenge every longterm couple faces.  It’s the same work we face as a society and civilization.

Though the subject has social resonance, it also has personal significance.  I approached this work from the perspective of one partner in a 30+ year relationship.  Because at times I still struggle to connect with my husband and flourish independently; because I still wonder, on occasion, if we are right for each other; because I marvel that we are together while many of our friends have parted; I wanted to observe on a micro level how longterm couples physically and verbally enact their connection. 

I invited couples to my studio and—once the pandemic struck—to my garden for one-hour interview sessions, which I filmed on my iPhone.

Using a series of exercises and games, I got my subjects moving together in different ways in the space of the studio and garden.  For example, I asked some couples to use props to create a stage set upon which to perform a play about their relationship.  I asked others to select images of couples from photographic collections, newspaper clippings and art history to re-enact for me and the camera.  Sometimes, I asked one partner at a time to play Peek-a-Boo, revealing to the camera, upon lowering her hands, first what she believes her mate wants to see when he looks at her, and second, what she wants her mate to see in her. No one presented the same facial expression in both instances.  

The images in this series do NOT reflect a core truth or judgement about my subjects’ connections.  Rather, they isolate moments from the film footage that resonate with me and telegraph a complex dynamic. 

The psychology of longterm connection interests me.  Ambivalence is present in every relationship.  Along with love, there are annoying personality tics, repetitious conflicts and miscommunications.  Disappointment and hurt coexist with deep affection.   These paintings explore the light and the dark. 

Artworks that highlight the emotional, psychological and interpersonal aspects of experience, though not absent from contemporary art, seem in short supply.  I consider it a slyly radical act to take this path.  Like the late feminist painter, May Stevens, I strive to bring “the subtlest perceptions” and “a precise and delicate imagination" to my work.

Hot Lava: Family Pictures

Most adults of the pre-digital age are familiar with family photo albums, though these are now relics.  My family albums, especially the ones circa 1958-62, preserve visual evidence of typical childhood escapades. More significantly, when viewed through a lens focused on feeling, they reveal clues to the emotional reality that formed me—the world created, inhabited and circumscribed by my intimate family members.

Like so many families, ours looked good on the outside and my mother labored to keep it that way, thoroughly bamboozling me about our exceptionalism and sound mental health along the way.

Beneath surface appearances, however, dysfunction festered. These pictures ponder the inner life of a child sensitive to her often-perilous environment and the lingering echoes of emotional trauma experienced in the shadows.  It’s not the whole story, but it is my attempt to create, in the language of paint, a partial memoir of my emotional life.

All images, save two, are based on 3 x 3 inch, black & white snapshots, collected in slowly deteriorating, faux leather albums.  By inventing color palettes for my black and white source material, I am able to enhance mood and meaning, teasing out emotional truths petrified on or beneath the surface.  Other strategies include altering the figures’ environments and collaging together two or more photos or references to create the final composition.  In one case, I incorporate the final gestures of Pompeii victims, smothered in ash from the Vesuvius eruption.

“What if childhood is the reality and adulthood the fairytale?”  This work explores my own emotional through lines and acknowledges the persistent whispers of childhood alive in us all. 

Ellen Goldschmidt, December 2017

Interlopers: Unintended Narratives

I began each of the drawings in this  series with nothing in mind beyond the impulse to draw a figure.  I used no models, no sketches, simply indulging a desire to tap into my visual memory to find out what resides there.  Once I committed to idling executive function and following the marks to an image, a kind of alchemy occurred. I found that the quality of line this process yields is looser, freer, and more expressive than lines struggling to represent a specific object, person or idea. And the subject matter that develops by calling on the subconscious and the intelligence of the body is compelling.   There is deep satisfaction in marrying process and content.

Scale is key to my work.  Working large helps me tap into a physical understanding of the human body and loosens my mark making.  Scale also dictates a certain clarity and economy of execution.  It is a great teacher of how much is enough.

I never set out to tell stories. My characters arrive invited, but unintended—interlopers pushing their way into my consciousness, demanding care and attention.  Once one figure emerges, it calls forth another and another, or, in a few cases, insists on commanding the stage alone. The narrative ambiguity is intentional.  I think of these works as figurative Rorschachs, images that extend an invitation to the viewer to project a feeling, relationship or interpretation onto the characters portrayed.

In these pictures I confront my mistrust of fixed meanings and celebrate the role of images to provoke associations of which the viewer (and artist) may be previously unaware.  In this way we participate in narratives which we do not fully control.

Ellen Goldschmidt, 2014