Elisa Jensen is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work merges a profound sensitivity to nature, memory, and the passage of time. Her paintings, primarily rendered in oil, are meditations on light and its fleeting presence, inspired by the natural radiance that James Joyce described as “the whatness of a thing. The supreme quality is felt by the artist when the esthetic image is first conceived in his imagination. The Mind in that mysterious instant Shelley likened beautifully to a fading coal.” Jensen explores the transient beauty of light in her works—whether it’s the woven shade of a deep wood, the glimmer of a river at dusk, or the gentle dawn filtered through a bedroom window. This attention to fleeting moments, combined with Jensen’s poetic sensibility, brings her canvases alive with an ethereal quality that captures both the immediacy of a scene and the misty nostalgia of recollection.
Jensen focuses on the on quiet, domestic spaces, with windows or doorways that lead the eye to outer, often glowing, exteriors. Jensen’s forms are soft, but never hazy. She structures her compositions with the geometric forms and lines of doorframes, windows and horizons. These more graphic elements are mitigated by the materiality of her paint, subtle changes of light across the surfaces, and the people and plants which occupy those spaces. Jensen uses a rich, moody color palette with deep, brooding tones juxtaposed against bright, glowing accents. Jensen captures light in an almost mystical manner, as light softly penetrates her spaces. This soft diffusion of light suggests these are moments of the morning or late afternoon, times often associated with reflection and nostalgia that, in Jensen’s compositions, radiate with subtle luminosity.
Her body of work spans diverse subjects, from intimate interiors to expansive landscapes, often painted from memory and infused with a personal touch. Beyond landscapes, she has portrayed her young daughters immersed in nature, evoking a sense of awe in the everyday and suggesting a harmonious connection between figures and their surroundings. Her mastery of light—whether sunlight bursting into interiors or moonlight gently illuminating a scene—draws viewers into a space where reality and memory blend seamlessly.
Elisa Jensen was born in 1965 and graduated from Smith College with a BFA, and from the New York Studio School. She currently teaches at the New York Studio School and Pratt Institute. She has received awards for her work from New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (2015), National Academy Prize for Painting (2010), John Koch Award in Art, American Academy of Arts and Letters (2009), and Revson Foundation Fellowship (1993). She is also a member of Corner artists’ group (Denmark, 2015). A selected list of her solo and two person shows includes Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA; Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY; David & Schweitzer Contemporary, Brooklyn, NY; John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY; The Painting Center, New York, NY; Kimmel Gallery, NYU, New York, NY; Valentine Gallery, NY; Royal Danish Consulate General, New York, NY; Morsø Kunstforening, Denmark. Her work has been reviewed and featured in Two Coats of Paint, Whitehot Magazine, Hyperallergic, Artcritical, Artefuse, Tilted-arc, The New York Sun, New York Daily News, and The New York Times. Elisa Jensen lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.