"Ellen Berkenblit’s extensive body of work employs the simplified language of cartooning to be our guide through the complexity of painting. Berkenblit’s lexicon of characters includes a recurring female whose Pinocchio-esque nose is often truncated at the canvas’s edge. She deceptively leads you to the possibility of a continuation on another panel. As viewers we have been duped; the characters that lure us into Berkenblit’s paintings are not there for a laugh, but the vehicle for a story about the depths of painting itself. In particular she challenges our expectations of the comic form by filling her characters with something that notoriously make us all uncomfortable: abstract painting. Berkenblit’s mastery of black paint (varying its hues and textures), allows her to explore the tension between its absence and presence. The magic continues in her search for light to bring us out of the darkness, both thematically and in paint."
- The Mill ADK
2024 - 2025
For more information click here.
