NYAB Event - Ellen Chuse Exhibition

Ellen Chuse Exhibition

440 Gallery

This event has ended.

The 440 Gallery presents Imagined Light, new paintings by Ellen Chuse inspired by an Italian sojourn

Is it possible to revive an old love affair? Almost forty years after living in Italy for a year as a Fulbright Fellow in Sculpture, Ellen Chuse returned to Rome for several months in 2010. She not only rekindled her love affair with the city, the country, and its culture, but also reconnected with the unique light, shapes and colors she encountered during her daily outings. Chuse has brought these impressions to life in a series of acrylic paintings on paper. This new body of work springs directly from her walks in the parks and gardens of Rome where the pines in particular came to represent the city for her. These new paintings, including several very large, bold pieces, reflect Chuse's decades-long fascination with tree forms as well as her continuing exploration of the emotional resonance of color and line.

Imagined Light opens at the 440 Gallery on Thursday, January 12th, and will run through Sunday, February 19th, 2012. There will be a reception for the artist from 6:00-9:00 PM, Thursday, January 12th. The 440 Gallery, located at 440 Sixth Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, is in the Park Slope neighborhood and convenient to the F, M, and R subways.

This is Chuse's third solo show at the 440 Gallery. On display will be five 61" by 42" acrylic paintings on paper, together with five small studies and two companion pieces. Working with organic forms in nature, both representational and abstract, the work reflects the intensity of her experience of form and place. Chuse said, "I prefer to paint on paper, which entices me with its texture, flexibility and abundance. Painting on paper has renewed my connection to drawing where the paper itself often creates the line. The larger scale works convey the monumentality of the forms and the intensity of the light and atmosphere surrounding them. I bring my experience of light, place and time to the viewer through these paintings, which I think of as landscapes of the mind."

Long a part of the Brooklyn art community, particularly in Gowanus and Red Hook, Ellen Chuse has been a member of the 440 Gallery for over five years. Chuse received a BFA in Sculpture from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1967, and her MFA in Fine Arts from Queens College, CUNY in 1971. In 1972 she was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to Italy in Sculpture. During the 1970's her sculpture was exhibited in various galleries in New York and New Jersey. While living in Austin, TX, in the mid-1980s she turned to drawing in charcoal and showed widely there. In recent years her practice has evolved from painting with pastel and chalk to working in graphite and acrylic or oil on paper. She has participated in group exhibitions in New York City, such as at the Kentler International Drawing Space, and has shown regularly during the annual Gowanus Artists Studio Tour since 2000.