CONNIE ELSBERG

About the Artist

Connie Elsberg is an abstract painter who produces collaged pieces as well, working with fabric, netting, tulle, and various papers over acrylic paint. Her process is often intuitive. Through experimenting with paint, materials, and surfaces she follows where they lead and trusts it will take her in promising directions.

Elsberg aims to be more suggestive than literal in her pieces. She is incredibly fascinated by the idea that we live in multiple worlds and layered realities–in different physical surroundings, different social groups, different cultures, different realms of knowledge. And wants to provide hints of other perspectives, of varied angles of vision, of enigmas and emerging perceptions.

She will often begin paintings with watery washes on canvas. She will then work over the washes with various materials and acrylic, having a different approach depending on desired effect for each piece. A process in which she describes as meditation on opposites: low and structure, possibility and form, or process and planning.

Elsberg started as an artist over 25 years ago, and worked through the usual—figure, still life, landscape—before deciding on her preferred approach of painting abstractly. She often turns to a variety of painters for inspiration, such as Diebenkorn, Frankenthaler, Kline, Kandinsky, Joan Snyder, and Julie Mehretu. She resides in the Northern Virginia area and was a Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Northern Virginia Community College before retiring.