Laura Elkins, Self As Lady Bird, 2000
acrylic on canvas, 34 x 28"
Laura Elkins will give a gallery talk at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue on Thursday, April 23 at 7 pm for The First Ladies & Me -- please join us!
Laura Elkins examines notions of power, femininity, sexuality, and aging in the traditional genre of portraiture, using iconic, age-indeterminate images of American First Ladies to inform her series of witty self-portraits. The series began after the artist viewed official portraits in The White House; over time, she increasingly integrated personal, political, and catastrophic events into the images, such as her self-portraits made after Hurricane Katrina, where she appears as First Ladies Mamie Eisenhower and Lady Bird Johnson, submerged in flood waters. Until 2007, Elkins confined her subjects to "mid-century modern" First Ladies, but was drawn into the recent presidential campaign, when she began painting self-portraits as Hillary Clinton. On a 2008 residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Elkins was additionally inspired by the bucolic landscape to create self-portraits of Hillary en plein air, exposed to the vagaries of weather and the elements. Recent work includes Self as Michelle O, in which the artist grapples for the first time with a portrait vehicle younger than she, and a series of studies of her own and Michelle Obama's eyes.
For directions, please see Sixth & I's website; for more about Laura Elkins, please visit MCF-A.com, our temporary blog (during website construction), Elkins's website, or call (860) 450-6445.
Press/links for this exhibition continue -
