About the exhibition
Meredith Ward Fine Art is pleased to present Anne-Davnes Elser: Second Birth, an exhibition of 11 paintings which will be on view from May 12 through June 16, 2023. This will be the artist's first exhibition with the gallery and her first exhibition in New York.
The title work, Second Birth, is inspired by Anne-Davnes “rearranging herself" after a series of personal losses, including a divorce and the death of her father from Alzheimer's disease in 2020. The artist wants to be “curious about her pain," and uses her paintings to explore these inner states of mind.
Anne-Davnes Elser was born in Aurora, Illinois in 1968. At the age of three, her family moved to Atlanta, Georgia. A shy and quiet girl growing up, she found an expressive outlet in visual art and eventually enrolled at The Cleveland Institute of Art, where she studied painting and ceramics. As a young art student in Cleveland, her impulse to articulate “the search for self from the female lens" was unpopular and discouraged by her teachers. Nevertheless, she persisted in this theme and continues to explore it through this latest body of work. Settling back in Atlanta, the artist has taught design and emotive typography and has developed a global audience as an instructor in calligraphy. Throughout, she has maintained her painting practice, which became a space to navigate the connection between her inner and outer experiences.