Ellen Lesperance

Gallery Affiliations: Ambach & Rice

Region: Pacific Coast

My gouache-on-paper paintings are inspired by sweaters worn by women at protests, sit-ins, demonstrations, and acts of civil disobedience. These handmade articles of clothing, like other forms of Creative Direct Action, such as picket signs, banners, street theater, body painting, and costumes, offer narrative and invite personal interaction. Analyzing the sweater’s gauge of yarn, cut, and construction, I paint its pattern square by square, stitch by stitch. Pattern, shape, and symmetry emerge in these highly detailed compositions, which merge figuration and abstraction while still very directly referencing the body.