The new Elisa Contemporary Art exhibit, Looking In and Letting Go: Faces and Places, opens September 23 at the Elisa Contemporary Art Gallery in Riverdale NY. It will run through December 16, 2020. During this unprecedented year of masks, social distancing, isolation and standing up to be seen, we want to connect with our audience with a range of figurative and landscape artwork...and offer a face, a place or a space, that each viewer can connect with and explore.

The exhibit features portraits by San Francisco Artist, Jeffrey Palladini; Texas Artist, Mitch McGee and Austin Artist, Ray Donley. It will also feature landscapes by Canadian artist Marie Danielle Leblanc; Water and Barnscapes by Connecticut artist, Dale Najarian; and imagined cityscapes and spaces by Colombian artist, Alexis Duque.

The portrait gallery includes “Negation – Scratch #6” by Jeffrey Palladini. The conceptual basis behind this series are the effects of others’ preconceptions, expectations, opinions, and biases on one's own identity. The two figures, Cap 25 and Striped Cap, by Ray Donley also explore life’s challenges and are part of “The Lost Ones” series. According to Donley, “These individuals that I create – 99 percent of them through my imagination – are on a journey, some sojourn: getting lost, getting found, setting out. Perhaps suggesting that we're all lost in some emotional, spiritual, psychological, cosmological way.” Two Pop Art prints by Mitch McGee complete the space.

Our Places section include the abstracted landscapes by Canadian artist, Marie Danielle Leblanc. These are based on travels around the world. According to Leblanc, “my works celebrate the luminous qualities of water, earth and sky, field and forest, landscape and nature. A tree bursting with life, the peacefulness of the horizon in a seascape, or flowers that appear to be dancing in a meadow – each painting becomes a meditation on the limitless beauty of the natural world.” The paintings by Dale Najarian explore the Connecticut seascape, as well as internal world of an equestrian barn. Alexis Duque takes us into imagined cityscapes and villages filled with people, animals and nature.