Elizabeth Enders: Landscape/ Language/Line

March 7 through August 23, 2009

Elizabeth Enders builds microcosms of her very own making. Brilliantly fusing principles of realism with those of lyrical abstraction, the artist brings these formal opposites into a purposeful harmony. In her series of landscapes, with an emphasis on seascapes painted over past several decades, Enders displays a unique balance of the descriptive and of the imaginary. The essential parts of the particular site in nature, such as the horizon line or a color hue characteristic of a certain area of the coast, are always fully acknowledged. It is through the elimination of all nonessential details that the artist transforms these locales into universal statements about the mysterious beauty of the coastal areas.

Enders’ art is very much about communicating a message – about the spirit of the place, about the beauty of flora that is celebrated in a sublime series of botanical drawings, but also about the silence and isolation that can be a painful part of the human experience. To overcome this isolation, to establish a potential discourse with others, Enders began marking sheets of paper or canvas with mysterious marks and fictional alphabets. Our propensity, not only to view these as visual statements but often the inclination “to read” these works, depends on the experiences and temperament of each viewer.

Lyrical and meditative, the work of Elizabeth Enders heightens our curiosity to learn more about the world around us, to penetrate deeper into the often concealed magic of our everyday experience. The power of Enders’ artistic persuasion energizes our perception, enabling us to participate in the wonder of discovery.