Artist Spotlight: Louisa McElwain

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

Oil of Joy: Louisa McElwain

Louisa McElwain’s paintings tell her story in vivid swaths of color and light that dance across the canvas. They chronicle no mere catalogue of the artist’s career and life, but her journey into the heart of the Southwestern landscape, recounting her transcendent experiences with subject and medium even as they comprise narratives of energy, its genesis, and its eventual manifestation on canvas.

Central to McElwain’s work was her desire to channel nature’s magnificence. In thick, heady brushstrokes of luminous pigments, she built in two dimensions connections among forces physical, spiritual, and external. To achieve this, she harnessed oil paint’s malleability to capture and suspend energy—a gift made visible in the rich hues, intricate play of light, and variety of textures that fill each work.

McElwain’s abstracted landscapes, painted en plein air, peel back the curtain of romantic conformity to expose the pulsating core of her subjects. A coalescence of representation and abstraction, the paintings give equal validity to theme and artistic material. The imagery has been distilled, filtered through the artist’s vision, and infused with palpable dynamism. Ultimately, objects are represented by their most fundamental elements: light, color, line, and shape.

Louisa McElwain’s work will be featured in a solo exhibition at Evoke Contemporary from August 26 to October 22, 2022.

—Elizabeth L. Delaney

Louisa McElwain, Old as the Hills, oil on canvas, 24” × 36”.