Elan Chardin
Élan Chardin Gombart received her MFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art, BFA from the University of Oregon and is owner at Hanson Howard Gallery.
MessageÉlan Chardin (b. 1969) is a visual artist and writer living in Southern Oregon. Her artworks range in scale from large and sculptural paintings to more intimate forms. She interweaves the languages of painting and drawing as well as the written word. She employs immediacy and intuitive approaches to material and mark making to imagine physical forms that reflect our inner worlds and notions of embodiment and perception. Her writing is autobiographical and explores the interplay between the conscious and unconscious, the rational and emotional, challenging the hierarchical prioritizations and value of certain kinds of knowledge over others.
Élan has an MFA from Pacific NW College of Art. She teaches at Southern Oregon University and is owner at Hanson Howard Gallery in Ashland, OR. Élan was the recipient of the Ohio Arts Foundation Individual Artist Grant as well as grants from the Haines and Friends Foundation.
Statement
My practice is a personal inquiry into the psyche; a cross pollination involving the thoughts and images from my conscious and unconscious mind, memory, emotion and the experience of embodiment—types of intelligences that can be undervalued—but which I sense are primary in creating our shared reality. Using provisional materials and transparency of process; employing devices of weight, time and space, I construct paintings which seldom sit neatly on the wall. They question the form, structure and context of painting in the same way I probe the hierarchy of intelligences. The visual language is both personal and suggestive of archetypal language. Because visual language has a natural kinship with the poetics of written language, I use poetry and prose in forming this system. My body often determines the scale of the work and the actions determine the forms.
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