Elena Redmond on Subverting Self-Portraiture
Installation view of Sitting Ducks. Photo credits DIMIN.
In Sitting Ducks, Elena Redmond’s debut solo show at DIMIN, the painter asks her audience to reconsider the art of self-portraiture. Her nude subjects exist somewhere between imagined and real, rendered faceless or abstract to act as mirrors of our deepest desires and fears. With references ranging from surrealism to Foucault, Redmond subverts traditional ideas of representation by choosing unique poses, perspectives, and color combinations, tricking our eyes into exploring a space that feels both private and public, exposed yet entirely in her control.
During this interview with IMPULSE, Redmond discusses painting from a place of vulnerability and how she navigates her role as artist and apparent visual inspiration.
Installation view of Sitting Ducks. Photo credits DIMIN.
Christina Elia: What attracted you to all the art historical references in Sitting Ducks? How do they inform your portrayal of the female body—specifically, its relationship to space?
Elena Redmond: Mannerist and late Renaissance work interested me because of the paint’s physicality. A lot of those painters used a gray underpainting with glaze layers of color on top. That’s something I concentrated on for this exhibit.
Sometimes, I fixate on a technical thing, or I become obsessed with certain shapes and want to blow them out. I like the elongated fingers or strangely proportioned heads and hands in Mannerist painting. I tried to maintain the curvature of the bodies and the contrapposto poses while making my figures a bit fleshier, focusing on the volume of forms. I was thinking more about the paintings as a whole and less about their individual references.
Deaf Hen, 2025. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 in. Photo credits DIMIN.
CE: How do you select which colors to use in your work? Do you think it alters the viewer’s perception of the nude form?
ER: I try to lead with my intuition regarding color. Color theory and optical illusions are big motivating factors for me, as well. I love to trick the eye—when you look at something for so long and look away, you still see that color or afterimage.
When I was working on Age of Compliance (2025), I had so much fun using blue. Dogs in the Window (2025) has a lot of blue in it as well, though it isn’t very obvious. The same blue appears as a dry glaze in Deaf Hen (2025).
CE: Windows are a recurring motif in your paintings. Your subjects are often seated, obscured, or framed by windows, almost suggesting they’re being watched. How does the window function symbolically in your exploration of being seen and being vulnerable?
ER: I used to work in a studio with a huge first-floor window. People could see me working, but just as often, I was the voyeur, watching out my window. The voyeurism went both ways. I looked at Edward Hopper’s paintings and liked how most of them felt very non-sexual. Personally, I don’t consider my paintings to be sexual, either. I love to work in that sort of uncanny valley.
Window Performance, 2025. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 in. Photo credits DIMIN.
CE: In what ways have you expanded your practice with the paintings in Sitting Ducks? Have you discovered any new techniques?
ER: Over the past year or so, I started painting totally differently, leaving behind the wet-on-wet techniques. I’ve been enjoying using thin dry layers—a technique called scumbling—which adds a painterly edge or grit to the pieces.
My degree in school was in printmaking and drawing, so in the past, I intuitively made paintings like you would make a print—building the composition from the back to front, for example, rather than working the entire surface like a drawing. It’s been a lot of fun evolving my practice and incorporating my drawing skills more into the work.
Dogs in the Window, 2025. Oil on canvas. 40 x 30 in. Photo credits DIMIN.
CE: Your figures often have obscured faces, as well as bodies that are cropped, hidden, or turned away. What does this anonymity mean?
ER: I wanted to examine what exactly makes something a self-portrait. Removing faces from the figures gives me more freedom to work from my imagination, even though I often start with a photo reference. I think of the subjects as avatars or decoys because they don't really feel like me. Obscuring the face helps me pose a challenge to the viewer, like, “This is paint, remember?”
With these recent works, I wanted to incorporate more still-life style objects that imitate the body. In Deaf Hen (2025), the pear mimics the guitar, which mimics the body. A ditto-ditto-ditto moment.
Dogs in the Window, 2025. Oil on canvas. 40 x 30 in. Photo credits DIMIN.
CE: As both subject and painter, how do you navigate the power dynamics of that duality? Is self-portraiture an act of defiance or documentation?
ER: It’s a complicated question for me. In my earlier work, I was exploring self-portraiture in a more one-to-one way. The more paintings I make, the less I understand the images to be self-portraits. Often, people interpret the subjects as a direct representation of me, but my body doesn’t look like that. In actuality, I work from tons of photos of myself, painting references, my imagination, etc. My focus is not realism—it’s more so about agency. I can’t control somebody else’s body in the same way I can manipulate my own.
I don’t know how to bridge the gap between what viewers interpret and how I feel about the work. A lot of artists, myself included, hope to remind audiences that they’re looking at an actual painting, where time is collapsed onto one flat canvas. The more I turn away from self-portraiture and that terminology, the closer I feel to the work I want to make.
Man in the Room, 2025. Oil on canvas. 40 x 30 in. Photo credits DIMIN.
CE: The title Sitting Ducks implies passivity or helplessness, but you also reference the idea of “rebellion masquerading as compliance.” How do you see this dynamic playing out in your own work?
ER: I originally wanted to call the exhibit Age of Compliance, but that felt too intense. I ended up selecting the cheekier, more lighthearted title from my list instead. Obviously, most ducks aren’t going to be shot, but they’re still at risk, knowingly or not. Sitting Ducks captures the vulnerability of being in plain sight.
“Rebellion masquerading as compliance” is a quote from Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik, a book I read while making these paintings, which contrasts writers Joan Didion and Eve Babitz. This phrase encapsulates the mood for this show; it’s been repeating in my head since I first read it. Rebelliousness, shown through exaggerated poses, is masked behind the curtain of compliance: masking in public, but in your head, thinking about ways to rebel. Some of my subjects are sitting still, and that’s the mask.
CE: You position your subjects as “sites of projection and psychological negotiation.” How do you envision the viewer’s role in this dynamic? Are you inviting us to empathize with the figures, confront our own voyeurism, or both?
ER: I think both, depending on the person and how they approach the work. My favorite reaction is from those who see more than just nudity, those who might see themselves in the pose or mood.
Obviously the interior setting, which I used more for this exhibit than ever before, evokes greater intimacy than an exterior landscape. Sometimes my paintings confront people's inherent desires by accident. That’s how I know I’m onto something.
Elena Redmond in her studio, photo courtesy of the artist.
Elena Redmond: Sitting Ducks is on view at DIMIN from April 25 through May 31, 2025.
