ABOUT
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Ellen Weitkamp
I consider my studio practice to be a paced and daily conversation with place, reflecting on how I negotiate where the past, present, and future sit. Pulling from images from my everyday, my oil paintings and prints evolve as a process of rediscovering the environment I inhabit and discerning my place within it.
My paintings emerge from a slow and meticulous process of collaging translucent and opaque layers, text, and varying perspectives onto shaped and rectangular supports. This process encapsulates the expansiveness of time, using ordinary subjects like an unmade bed, an empty driveway, or the interplay of light on a kitchen counter. Through my use of overlapping visual and written elements, spaces and meanings can be enveloped and revealed. For instance, in September 2022–December 2023, the text from a postcard floats on top of a blanket, all of which is hidden by a sheer curtain.
My prints, on the other hand, depict an immediacy of place and presence through a direct lithographic drawing practice that shows more than what can be noticed in a passing moment. Recent prints depict a subtle light shift on the side of a building, a funny pairing of similarly shaped objects, or a glass that is precariously close to the edge.
The exchange between slow, meticulous painting and the immediacy of drawing allows my work to navigate the intricate dance between permanence and transience. With each composition, I infuse a heightened presence, a subtle nuance of the mundane, and a conscious effort to capture something unrepresentable: the ephemeral nature of time.
Oil paint and colored pencil on panel, 30 × 23½ in.
Oil on panel, 34 × 60 in.
Oil on panel, 43½ × 42 in.
Oil on panel, 27 × 27 in.
Oil on panel, 72 × 29 in.