Elsa Rensaa
“Out of the Wilderness and Into the Blue”
New York, 55 Delancey Street
Spanning the 1970s through 1990s, Rensaa’s exquisite paintings are rendered with meticulous applications of thin acrylic washes, bringing forth lush, syncretic visual portals. These works draw from a vast and visionary range of references including Ancient Nordic, Egyptian, and Eastern imagery, in addition to Renaissance, Art Nouveau, and Dada art movements. The Lower East Side iconography is distinctly recognizable as Rensaa’s own. Born in Norway in 1944 and raised in Edmonton, Canada, Rensaa relocated to lower Manhattan in 1979, where she has remained a critical fixture of the downtown community. Although well-recognized for her polymathic contributions, technical abilities, and cultural knowledge, her paintings were seldom shown when she made them. Due to her reclusive nature, the depth and brilliance of Rensaa’s work is only starting to surface and become understood today.
Installation view, Out of the Wilderness and Into the Blue, James Fuentes, New York, 2024
Rensaa’s singular oeuvre of paintings brings together her precise vision and incisive artistic references. Early in her creative career, Rensaa was the art director for the largest printing company in Western Canada, after which she moved to New York, where she found work at Sienna Studios on Elizabeth Street. There, she became one of very few artisans in the city who could make color separations for prints by hand—known as a chromiste in the French tradition. She quickly became one of the leading experts in this field, executing prints by Picasso, Dalí, and others. Working by day at the print shop, she focused on her intricate paintings during her off hours—ensconced in her home studio on Essex Street.
Carrying through her life as a painter, Rensaa remained deeply engaged in the process of experimenting with restricted palettes and carefully layered color to produce limitless tones and hues. By her hand, thin washes of yellow and red acrylics reveal shades of orange, amber, scarlet, and ochre imbued with the translucent and luminescent effect of oil paint. Although introverted, Rensaa’s deep connection to the world in which she lives radiates in her artwork. In addition to painting, she played an important role in New York’s underground culture, influencing street fashion with the embroidered baseball caps she created with her life partner Clayton Patterson, supporting and advocating for the once-illegal tattoo community, and enmeshing herself with the leading graffiti writers of the day.
