Instalments | Ellen Siebers

Ellen Siebers (b.1986), whose always small-scale observational paintings hover poetically on the edge of dreams has described her process as moved by moments accumulated, often unconsciously, on her daily walks through the Hudson Valley, in upstate New York where she lives and works. Clouds swirl and shift, a flower glints in the grass, trees fade to dusk, and light fades on the silhouetted outline of the Catskill Mountains. Each painting offers an almost sensory experience of Siebers' life as it is seen, heard, smelt and felt.

 

Siebers has described this gathering of inspiration and influence as “…an exchange between the physical and the psychological, the present and the past, frameworks for my studies of both life and art; two things felt in equal measure.”

 

As part of this process Siebers has cited influences that are wide-ranging and carefully considered. Nature looms large, filtering seasonal shifts through veils of delicate and feathery brush strokes, alongside cultural prompts as diverse as the poetry of the late C18th visionary William Blake and the contemporary paintings of Elizabeth Peyton. Siebers’ paintings have an unusual place in the world – somehow both tentative and strong willed, with a kind if yearning at their heart for something hinted at, but never quite determined. They celebrate a coming together of quiet corners and dramatic moments, the sublime and the ordinary, the divine and the quotidian.