Ellen Altfest

Ellen Alfest (born New York City in 1970) is a realist, figurative painter who always paints from life. Her small scale oil paintings of subjects from plants, rocks, logs and gourds to details of the male anatomy are painstakingly realised over a long period of time. Compositionally the paintings are all tightly cropped and framed so that folds of skin, a tuft of hair or the variegated surfaces of bark are intensely scrutinized and rendered in exquisite, almost excessive, detail. This heightened sense of realism, almost a myopic vision, creates an uncanny interplay between still life and life-model, making both appear almost unfamiliar and abstract.

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