ELLI CROCKER is one of the gallery's and New England's most powerful and inventive figurative artists. Her new body of work continues her exploration of the theme of man's relationship to the physical world, focusing particularly on the flora and fauna of the natural environment from which man has become increasingly estranged. There is always a strong psychological edge to the artist's work. She uses her superb draftsmanship combined with mixed media, sometimes even including actual plant specimens,to point up the fragility of human existence and the relationships amidst the more potent aspects of modern technology. Working on mylar, a chemically engineered, translucent ground, which allows the artist to created multi-layered works, Crocker is further enabled to transmit her message of the layers of meaning in both existence and truth. The artist has increasingly turned her attention away from humankind to create portraits of individual (and highly unusual) animals and plants. These large works, as well as her smaller oils on canvas are, as always, arresting in their power and spellbinding in their intensity.
Featured: July 16th to July 29th