ELLEN SIEBERS
Telescope or a Microscope IV, oil on marble ground on panel, 12" x 12", 2012

Ellen Siebers is currently a lecturer in painting at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa and her BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was recently featured as Editor's Choice in the 87th issue of New American Paintings, and has exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States.

In her own words:

"Ellen Siebers creates small to medium scale oil paintings, a body of mixed-media works on paper, and single-edition books. Her recent work revolves around the awkward, disconnected, violent, and loving relationships that exist between the natural world and oneself. These relationships are investigated largely through two gestures: the act of carving and the act of framing. Carving in that it is an attempt to physically imprint something human onto a natural object. Framing in that it is an attempt to selectively identify an illusion or image, while signifying its importance. Yet a framing device ultimately removes the viewer from the identified image.

The figures and figurative references serve as vessels for self-exploration. The inherited narratives are meant to circulate around a visceral moment experienced, not a sequential event, and the drawing line leads the way through the paintings, working to dissect and restrict the figurative from the natural elements. Siebers aims to create physical space in the paintings through glazing techniques. Flattened space and quick gesture is also important, as it relates to the space or environment of memory or internal experience. Within her paintings, Siebers extrapolates stories from works of non-fiction and then interjects her own experience of disconnect from the natural world to create the myths of her life."

Ellen Siebers's website