Stavanger, Norway
Ellen M Kalvig paints atmospheric phenomena. Her large, raw cotton canvases, washed with watery acrylics, seem at first like landscapes, because that is the expected category, but their crucial aspect is the miraculous variety of the northern sky. Perhaps they are skyscapes? The ground, insofar as it is present, seems there mostly to balance or offset the air. Somehow Kalvig represents the impossible, the sort of visions that most of us would do well to just look at very appreciatively and not bother trying to record, even with special camera lenses. By eschewing realism, relying on washes of unexpected color and the power of high contrast, she succeeds in capturing the green glow of a far northern night; the crisp black outline of a mountaintop behind which the sun has just barely set; and the faint blueness of a cold, snowy evening. I recognize some of these environmental situations because I have had the privilege of experiencing them; it is moving to encounter an artist who knows them as well, or better, and has developed the means of putting them sensitively to canvas.
—Lori Waxman, March 18, 6:06 PM