Inka Essenhigh

 

A painter of fluid, dreamlike imagery that recalls the biomorphism of Yves Tanguy and Roberto Matta but also the candy-colored fantasias of Walt Disney’s Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, Inka Essenhigh has long excelled at producing landscapes that do double duty as inscapes. A key member of a generation of New York painters that, in the 1990s, rescued figuration from contemporary art’s Siberia, her canvases give shape to humanoid forms while also channeling Arshile Gorky’s amoebic definition of abstraction: “living organisms floating in vivid color.” Her newest paintings, including Predawn in Early Spring (2020), present imaginary pastoral futures as civilizational blooms, visions that—even when painting green shoots in grayscale—bespeak a hard-earned optimism. Not only are the artist’s putative subjects, beauty and nature, celebrated; so is her faith in an age-old medium, oil on canvas painting.

— CVF, USFCAM

 

Inka Essenhigh, Predawn in Early Spring, 2020. Enamel on canvas. 50 x 40 in. (127 x 101.6 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY.

 

Inka Essenhigh, Kitchen 2623 C.E., 2019. Enamel on canvas. 60 x 72 in. (152.4 x 182.88 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by John Lusis.

 

Inka Essenhigh, Kitchen 2623 C.E., 2019. Detail. Enamel on canvas. 60 x 72 in. (152.4 x 182.88 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by John Lusis.

Inka Essenhigh, Kitchen 2623 C.E., 2019. Detail. Enamel on canvas. 60 x 72 in. (152.4 x 182.88 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by John Lusis.

 
 

“After the adjustment, painting during the corona virus was great!

“It took about a month to adjust. My husband Steve and I prepared early. We stocked up with food for more than two weeks, got toilet paper and medicine, and we were even early enough for Steve to find a few boxes of real N95s in Chinatown. We ran into a gallerist who asked us what we were doing that day. We told her we were getting ready for the zombie apocalypse, to which she replied ‘the Armory?’ I didn’t know if she was joking. We took our son out of school a few days early. 

“Despite all the preparations I was taken by surprise when the city closed down my studio. I had to quickly carry home all my paint and various canvases. My problem was that the enamel paint I use is toxic to breathe (I wear a mask while I paint), so I couldn’t set up in the living room, which had become my son’s schoolroom. Luckily, I do have a basement that has a window in the back and a sidewalk door in front. The ceiling was low. I had a temper tantrum that lasted a week about the poor light before I settled down and got to work (the low ceilings meant that, no matter what, I cast a shadow on my painting while I worked).

“I loved the simplicity doing the same thing every day. Fewer surprises makes it easier to concentrate on my work. When 9/11 happened I could feel the world change and I wanted to change my work with it. I did eventually, slowly, working towards a brighter vision. The world is changing much more these days, but unlike 20 years ago, I feel that my work is exactly where I want it to be. I believe in the adage ‘you become what you mostly think of,’ and with that in mind, I can’t think of anything more important than making paintings that celebrate the beauty and mystery of nature.”

— Inka Essenhigh

 
 

Inka Essenhigh, The Blazing World, 2019. Enamel on canvas. 60 x 84 in (152.4 x 213.36 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by John Lusis.

 

Inka Essenhigh, The Blazing World, 2019. Detail. Enamel on canvas. 60 x 84 in (152.4 x 213.36 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by John Lusis.

Inka Essenhigh, The Blazing World, 2019. Detail. Enamel on canvas. 60 x 84 in (152.4 x 213.36 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by John Lusis.

Inka Essenhigh, The Blazing World, 2019. Detail. Enamel on canvas. 60 x 84 in (152.4 x 213.36 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL. Photo by John Lusis.

 
 
Artist Inka Essenhigh.

Artist Inka Essenhigh.

About Inka Essenhigh

(Bellefonte, PA, 1969)

She lives and works in NYC.

Inka Essenhigh is renowned for her dreamlike paintings, which translate her encounters with and intuitions about contemporary society into haunting, playful, sometimes disturbing visual scenes. Essenhigh paints landscapes from her imagination into which the eyes and minds of viewers might temporarily abscond. Employing a mix of narration, symbolism, and mystery, her paintings explore what can be known about nature and phenomena that lurk beyond our perception.  Recent solo exhibitions include: Other Worlds: Inka Essenhigh, Susquehanna Art Museum (Harrisburg, PA); Uchronia, Kavi Gupta Gallery (Chicago, IL); Inka Essenhigh: Manhattanhenge, The Drawing Center (New York, NY); and A Fine Line, Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art (Virginia Beach, VA). Recent group exhibitions include: Skirting the Line|Painting between Abstraction and Representation, Center for Maine Contemporary Art (Rockland, ME); FIXED CONTAINED, Kotaro Nukaga (Tokyo, Japan); Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters (New York, NY); and Imagine, Brand New Gallery (Milan, Italy). Her work may be found in numerous public collections, including Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY); Denver Art Museum (Denver, CO); Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (Miami, FL); Museum of Modern Art (NYC); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Seattle Art Museum; Tate Gallery (London, UK); and Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC).

Artist Instagram: @inkaessenhigh

Gallery website: kavigupta.com

Gallery website: milesmcenery.com