A series of paintings by artist Ellen R Hanson on stretched textiles. Hanson received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Painting and Art History from Bennington College in 2014 and received an MFA in Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2021. Her works explore the expression of femininity: elasticity hidden on the surface of fragility, the habits inside the clocking family habits, making people’s inner life and carefully woven effects have no effect. Hanson’s process involves first drawing elastic jersey cotton on charcoal and then pulling the primer down on the fabric to create a distortion in the figure. Thin, exaggerated numbers literally stretched out then applied to the oil with oil, smoothed with all the strokes and decorated with decorative flavors, giving a perfect surface impression. The result is a contradiction in the concept of women we construct: frustration, frivolity, and failure to achieve impossible ideals.
In “The Battle of Carmen”, Hansen competed media-drivenly with Katarina Witt and Debi Thomas at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary. Both figure skaters chose Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen Ice skating, which is an unusual coincidence, lays the foundation for direct comparisons and comments. The project also cites Laurie Dann, a woman with an indirect connection to Debi Thomas, who conducted a shooting several months after the Olympics that year. Hanson’s paintings are stretched and manipulated, highlighting the twists of reality and history: the tension between internal expectations and external judgments, and the imminent threat revealed under perfect pressure.
