About the Artist
BIO
Elsa Bluethner was introduced to oil painting at the age of 11 and painted every winter weekend until the age of 13. She pursued a creative career in fashion, costuming and fashion illustration and returned to painting in 2000.
Elsa has dedicated tens of thousands of hours painting and has developed a discipline routine where she paints most days of her life. She studies from books and has taken a few select workshops from masterful artists. Elsa is mostly curious about people and moments in their lives. She paints with expressive strokes and lively line work.
Her painted sketches are done from life and en plein air. Her larger studio works are often derived from her plein air work paired with photo references, still-life or live models. She also paints from memory and imagination.
In the first ten years as a visual artist, Elsa exhibited in over 25 juried shows in Canada and the US and won multiple first place awards for plein air painting. Now, she focuses her time on painting and showing her work locally and from her studio.
If you would like to commission a painting, Elsa will help you preserve something you love into a beautiful work of art. Information is available on the Commissions page of her website.
WHY I PAINT
Drawing people and making black and white Notan sketches, or black white and grey thumbnails using toned markers, bring me great pleasure. It's very satisfying for me to put down a few very confident marks, a skill I acquired by practicing a lot, and to create a convincing image of an object or subject with just a few suggested lines.
Painting, on the other hand, is a way for me to create an illusion that evokes a memory, a feeling, a discovery of something new. I paint for myself. I'm the one who must be pleased with the final result. If I'm not satisfied with a work and it has to leave my studio, as they do from time to time, I can be haunted by the idea of it being out there for ever. Some of my works have provided me with never ending joy and satisfaction as well.
The more I paint and the better I get, the worse I'm becoming. My standards keep rising and the task has become more laboured, more demanding, more frustrating. I used to believe there would come a day where it would become easier and I could just pop them out (paintings) and they would all be good. This is not the case, and I've had to learn to accept this is how it is when I know I'm painting with the intention to better understand my medium, my subjects and the way light works to illuminate this world we live in.
I've learned that the human eye likes contrast either in dark-light opposition or in colour opposites, which can be warm-cool, intense-subdued, and all that wonderful stuff. I've also learned the possibilities of paint, though limited compared to the colour of light, is vast, endless really. I'm faced with constant new products and tools which broadens the scope of what is possible. For now, I'm concentrating on working with older methods and tools and seeing how I can push the bar up on my creations.
To raise the bar on my practice, it's a very necessary thing to remove the ones that don't make the cut. It's liberating to say goodbye to older works that never quite worked out. They are the teachers for the future.
Oil painting, pastels or gouache all offer a very different approaches and challenges. Oil is immediate, I have control over my colours and mixing. I can scrape off and keep things looking fresh.
Pastels allow only for so many passages before the paper clogs up, so I must think more about each move and application. I can't really mix colours and having limited range, I must make decisions about colour and tone that impact the whole of the painting. I absolutely love the immediate impact pastels offer. Because I don't need it to dry, I can easily transport more pastel paintings done on location.
Gouache is a very different beast for me. It dries while I'm mixing colours and they darken when they dry on the painting. I find this medium difficult to use, but I like the velvety matte finish and the graphic quality in the finished work. I'm going to continue with this medium as I believe it will be wonderful when I get accustomed to using it. My pastels and oils tend to look softer and more dreamlike than my gouache paintings.
I also like mystery and stories. I wish to create mystery in my paintings, that demand something of my attention. When I paint figures, I recreate a story and I then cover up the story. Anything can be going on and I invite you to ask the question "what's happening here." I don't aim to paint pretty pictures that look good and match the décor, however, I do aim to express the beauty I see in everything. I bring much of the knowledge I gain from painting from life into works I create from imagination and memory.
I also paint still lifes in which I create stories especially when I paint stuffed toys and dolls. I often include symbols and create environments that reflect the events and stuff that's going on in my home, community, country, the world. It's not always obvious, but every one of my paintings has some meaning behind it.
The things that stop me in my tracks and make me want to grab my paints are things like, shadow patterns created by morning light on surfaces, backlit subjects and especially cloth. When light passes through cloth the colour intensifies and warms, as the shadow side is darker and subdued and the bits in the light are also subdued and less intense. I'm also very attracted to the way people move and their gestures as well as how they move their hands and how hands in themselves are very expressive. I will pause and stare at a colour as light passes through it and affects the colour of it's shadow. Sometimes I'm drawn to a face, a nose, the mess of hair, the drape of a dress or shirt, and white things. White things on white surfaces. White on white. The colours of white in the light. The colours of white in shadow. It's never just white.
My favourite colour is caramel.
