on view through november

We celebrated acclaimed abstract artist Elise Freda at her opening, Garden (Un) Variety, on October 12 and the exhibition will be on view through November. The show features new works that explore the natural calligraphy and energy found in trees, plants, and flowers surrounding Freda’s studio in New York’s Catskill Mountains. The mystery of abstraction reveals itself through nature’s unending source of line, light, color, and form.

“The Inner Space show didn’t start with me knowing it would be about a garden, but my paintings were heading in that direction. That’s the way my art evolves – I don’t decide on an idea and make the paint follow me; I follow the paint.”

Art and nature have always been integral to Elise’s life, and her aesthetic brings those two worlds together in outstanding new works featured in this exhibit.

Inner Space owner and curator, Allyson Paladino and Elise have been friends and creative soul sisters for decades. Elise has shown her work at Inner Space in the past and Allyson is elated to bring her Garden (Un) Variety collection to her gallery. As the event name suggests, the art is as individual and extraordinary as the artist herself. 

The Garden (Un) Variety exhibit features dozens of Elise’s recent and original artworks and range in size from large 48”x60” statement pieces that would transform a space to smaller 12”x12” works that could add a pop of interest or color to a room. If you would love an original piece of art that captures the beauty of nature in a distinctive abstract style, there will be a piece waiting for you at Inner Space.

We we’re honored to host and celebrate Art New England’s 45th Anniversary in tandem with the exhibition opening. It was a magical night! View Images

About Elise Freda

Elise grew up steeped in art and immersed in nature allowing her to explore the world around her through her creative and evolving lens. 

Creativity was encouraged and celebrated by her artist parents and living in Callicoon, a hamlet in New York’s Catskill Mountains, she was surrounded by nature. From an early age, she took inspiration from it.  

“My happy place was being outside. We lived in an old farmhouse with 30 acres to explore. I was always a nature kid, and we were always outside. Inside, art was everywhere – in my parents’ studios, on the walls, and in their library of art books. Nature is imprinted on my visual brain, and it expresses through my art.”

Elise still lives in the Catskills in a converted barn where her studio sits in one bay overlooking the many trees, plants, and flowers surrounding it. Her aesthetic today continues to be influenced by nature, yet her art is constantly evolving, and as Elise said, “That will continue to my last day on Earth.”

 As a process painter, she finds her paintings while making them. She paints in layers, pours paint, and gravitates toward big brushes like the type used to paint a house. She also favors sponges, a small metal painting pan, squeegees, a bristle broom, and all sorts of things for mark-making. Her technique allows her paintings to evolve.

“Drips have always been a thing for me since seeing a huge Matisse painting at the Museum of Modern Art when I was a child. Looking back, I believe it was The Piano Lesson, and I noticed this drip in the painting and thought it was so cool and free that you could have drips. Drips are still a very important part of my painting process. They happen organically, and I can react to them.”

Currently, Elise works predominantly in acrylics, which she mixes with either water or other mediums to achieve the flow and movement you see in her paintings. She owns a monotype press and has previous experience as an encaustic and oil painter.

Elise’s home is her sanctuary that she shares with her husband Joe, a successful writer who builds and renovates wooden boats in his free time. The two share a passion for paddling and rowing and enjoy time on the water together.

EXHIBITION PREVIEW

reviews

Elise’s distinct abstract art has caught the discerning eye of leading art writers from publications including Art New England, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Huffington Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among many others.

Elise Freda has long been attuned to coastal tidal pools and splintered, sea-wet rocks. A linear network fills the canvas and expands beyond the margins as it flows through an atmospheric blue-gray ground, punctuated with flickers of intense color—a yellow here, a magenta there. – Margot Clark, Art New England.

 Ms. Freda's art has a marvelous tactile quality... Compositionally speaking, she freely blends simple geometric forms with a spontaneous, calligraphic line creating a certain volume of space and information. Ms. Freda also has an incomparable sense of design – a factor that becomes quite evident in the effortless way she moves from small to big canvases. I left the show hungry for more, and delighted to find one more artist who puts technique and quality over trend. – D. Dominick Lombardi, The New York Times.

Abstract painter Elise Freda works in encaustic and straddles a world somewhere between East and West. Her flat, hard-edged single-color rectangles cite European Modernism, and her gestural brushstrokes nod to Asian calligraphy. ditating on her surroundings -- the Catskills' fields, light, mountains and sky -- Ms. Freda infuses suggestions of natural elements (the movement of wind through branches; the color of fall foliage; a moonlit night) into her pared-down palette and calligraphic strokes … Ms. Freda, internalizing and synthesizing a range of influences, achieves brevity, poetry. – Lance Esplund, The Wall Street Journal.

Elise Freda’s paintings are seductive—exquisitely so—but they’re also tough-minded and dicey. They risk prettiness but don’t succumb to it. In fact, some of the newest work turns its back on elegance altogether with curdling, acidic colors smeared roughshod across the painting’s breadth. – Thomas Micchelli, The Brooklyn Rail.

To read more of Elise’s reviews, please visit here.