Erotic-Lite and Unapologetic: The Provocative Works of Elena Redmond
by Clare Gemima
July 25, 2024
Visit the exhibition "Unfeigned Mysteries"
“Unfeigned Mysteries,” recently on view at DIMIN Gallery, showcased a collective of evocative and sweltering new paintings by Elena Redmond, Whit Harris, and Sarah Alice Moran. The exhibition presented works that traversed through layers of human and animal complexities, signaled an erotic-lite and non-sexed ‘gaze,’ and composed scenes imagined from all three painter’s sometimes raw, sometimes soothing reveries.
In several of Redmond’s paintings, like “When You’re Around,” and “Transference,” viewers are invited to experience her distinctive approach to self-portraiture, which boldly challenges conventional notions of identity, particularly those associated with a youthful femme.
During our conversation, Redmond reflected on her artistic evolution since 2021, when we first met, and highlighted her meticulous focus on the physicality of her canvases and the transformative potential of oil paint. Her creative process involves a dynamic interplay between photographic references and invented vignettes, resulting in works that are candidly authentic. She views critiques as encouragement for her work’s provocative nature, and plans to continue painting with the same unapologetic style and ability to stir.
Redmond draws inspiration from historical works like Frida Kahlo’s “Two Fridas” and Velázquez’s “Las Meninas,” as well as from her exhibition peers’ technical skill and emotional depth. She highlighted how her paintings in “Unfeigned Mysteries” interacted with those of Harris and Moran, and contributed to an exhibition that embraced shared hues and primal themes as hot as the intensity of this summer’s heatwave.
When You’re Around, 2024.
Elena Redmond.
Oil on canvas, 12 × 8 in.
Clare Gemima: Elena, congratulations for your inclusion in “Unfeigned Mysteries.” Personally, it has been amazing to follow your practice for a couple of years now, and while your paintings seem to carry a certain formal lineage, I am curious about how you reflect on your process and output. What is different today, and what are you glad to have adopted or neglected in your studio, since say the year 2021?
Elena Redmond: Thank you, Clare! It’s always wonderful to catch up with you. The first time we spoke, back in January of 2021, it was at the opening of my first in-person group show. I’d say the surfaces of my paintings have changed a lot. I’m obsessive in general, but especially about the canvas and physical qualities of the paint.
Identity Through Self-Portraiture
Clare Gemima: Your paintings are self-portraits, yet I cannot help but wonder if you’ve rendered yourself in dreamscape, specifically in “Waiting in A Hard Place,” 2024. Why is your main figure hairless, and nakedly vulnerable in your depiction? What are you diagnosing your subjects with exactly?
Elena Redmond: They are unavoidably self-portraits. I think there are many modes to access when it comes to that though. It also works so differently for the viewer than it does for me as the painter too. Self portraiture allows me to control every aspect of the painting, including the context for the figure. Removing things like pubic/body hair and tattoos from the figure leaves a bit of a clue for the viewer—a reminder that this is paint, and a painted, imaginary world. There are certain sets of paintings that, to me, address the same version of myself. For example, I think of the figure in my painting “Odalisque in Grosse Fatigue” (2023) as being the same figure in “Transference” (2024), and “Favorite Girl” (2023).
Elena Redmond’s Creative Process and Critiques
Clare Gemima: Your work toys with photographic and painterly compositions. How do you begin to construct a painting, and how do you decide which photographs, selfies, or internet sourced imagery to work from?
Elena Redmond: It’s rarely through the same method, I am often trying out a new order of things or color connection I might’ve discovered in a previous painting, or while looking at someone else’s work. I will work from many photos at once, while creating invented vignettes in other spots. Taking photo references of myself to work from began as a vulnerable form of exposure therapy, and is now more of a performance that happens behind the curtain and as part of the work.
Clare Gemima: I’m very curious about how your audience receives your work, given the wide range of feedback you must encounter. Could you share the most profound commentary or critique you’ve been provided as an emerging painter, whether solicited or unsolicited?
Elena Redmond: The nude figures bring a lot of unsolicited attention. There usually comes an extra layer of questioning surrounding the fact that it’s my body—the artist’s body. I like to remind people that it is paint and it is not my body, a body, or flesh. I’m not sure I’ve received profound critique at this point in my career to be quite frank. Maybe the most profound aspect is how repetitive some of the comments are. I hear the same couple of critiques consistently. People really want the bodies to be less-nude and less-me, which kind of just eggs me on. I did have a critic/gallerist come to my studio last year, around the time that a gallery I was represented by went up in metaphorical flames, I was feeling extremely lost. He told me he hated the digital aspects of the paintings at the time, and the work would be better without such elements. This was the best critique I’d received because it was so specific, and I was truly overjoyed to have provoked someone to hate something about my paintings.
Transference, 2024.
Elena Redmond.
Oil on canvas, 28 × 18 in.
Clare Gemima: How do you see your series of paintings in conversation with the other works in the show created by Whit Harris and Sarah Alice Moran?
Elena Redmond: The summer heat waves were really on the walls for this show. The paintings all felt sweaty in a way. The gallery had a really lovely bright yellowness to it through the shared hues in our paintings. All of the work seems to be dealing with primal feelings. It was such an honor to exhibit with Whit Harris and Sarah Alice Moran.
Clare Gemima: Which of Harris and Moran’s works do you draw the most inspiration from, whether technically or formally?
Elena Redmond: Whit’s work in this exhibition had joyfully buttery thick surfaces, “Femme with Knife” hit home for me and feels like a hot July heat and rage dream. Sarah’s “Victorious” is liquid and has an effortless form. Sarah’s work makes me giddy to play outside and separately play with fabric dye.
Portrait of Time, 2024.
Elena Redmond.
Oil on canvas, 40 × 30 in.
Clare Gemima: You reference works such as Velazquez’s Las Meninas,” (1656), and Rockwell’s “Triple Self-Portrait,” (1960), as well as the myth of Narcissus, (8 AD). How do these historical and mythological elements inform your practice, and what specifically about these narratives and paintings interest you?
Elena Redmond: These works were actually referenced by the gallerist while describing my work, although they are totally relevant references. Frida Kahlo’s “Two Fridas” (1939), and Marie-Denise Villers’ “Portrait of a Young Woman, called Charlotte du Val d’Ognes” (c.1800) are more specific historical references for me. Frida Kahlo is the first artist I remember learning of as a young kid, and I see my love for self portraiture connected to her.
In “Two Fridas,” Kahlo expresses the duality of a self split in two, two hearts beating as her own. Working with two self portraits interacting is one of my most inspired modes of working. I’ve made many paintings that reference this one such as “It’s a lobotomy, Leslie” (2022), “Don’t Beat Yourself Up Over It’ (2021),“Can’t Stop Listening and It Only Gets Worse”(2020), and maybe about seven other like-minded paintings in 2023. Velázquez’s “Las Meninas,” Lisa Yuskavage’s “Pink Studio (Rendezvous)” (2021), and Matisse’s “Red Studio” (1911), swirl around in my studio daydreams as I start to make studio paintings.
Clare Gemima: How do you balance these classical references with the modern context of Internet virality and pop culture?
Elena Redmond: It’s one of those things that changes with each small body of work I suppose. For a few years, I was hyper-fixating on avatars, and questions like “where does the body stop and the internet begin?” It’s shifting now. I am still a very online person, but it feels like the internet has almost left my studio entirely, and my figures are just bodies again. Connections to the internet now are more of a hidden gut-feeling in the painting, perhaps something in the colors that make them appear uncanny.
By Clare Gemima
Clare Gemima contributes art criticism to The Brooklyn Rail, Contemporary HUM, and other international art journals with a particular focus on immigrant painters and sculptors who have moved their practice to New York. She is currently a visual artist mentee in the New York Foundation of Art’s 2023 Immigrant mentorship program.
