Today we’d like to introduce you to Elisa Rossi.
Hi Elisa, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in Carpi, a small industrial town in Northern Italy. Piercing cold, foggy winters and scorching, humid summers. A place that definitely helps forge resilience and juggle between extremes. Many castles around, abandoned houses, sugarbeets and pumpkins fields where one can learn how to vanish and develop a bitter-sweet imagination. I spent most of my time reading, playing the piano, writing about imagined worlds and illustrating these stories with characters that are I cherish and that still emerge in my artworks today.
I left Italy after university and lived in Belgrade for a year, then Berlin and Brussels. It was a little destabilizing to hop from one country to another and to live like a Gipsy but at the same time, it enriched my cultural references, my multilingual skills and artistic sensitivity. Those years were pivotal to impress my mind with an explosive puzzle of scattered images. It’s like my inner eye can now tap into a collection of Polaroids that capture in a chaotic way glimpses and memories, like the Danube, orthodox churches, Croatian coastline, Sarajevo, East Berlin, checkpoint Charlie, Bruges, Place du Sablon, the Forest of Dreams in Brussels, the red light district at the Gare du Nord and it can go on and on.
My years in Belgium were critical to embrace fully the idea of making art the center of my life and embrace my path.
After a brief stay in Italy and a series of bizarre events, somehow I materialized in Los Angeles blazing the flashy light and the heat by staying close to the Veil.
The breeze that blows in from the luminous Void comforting like a fairytale. Painting from the Void, evocations, textures, beings from other worlds, swinging in suspension between the density of reality and the smoke of dreams. Art gave me a choice, a way to exist, to sow the pieces together and keep on weaving the story web.
Having the chance to be an artist and show my work here in Los Angeles is a special plot twist in my story and I would say that I am at my liminal best today, both dream and dreamer, pressed up to the Veil, but not desiring to tear it.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
From the moment you commit to it, the artist’s way is a tragi-comedy and a paradox IN FIERI. It seems a futile way of existing that makes you feel guilty for not being able to provide some sort of essential, more useful service, and at the same time, it is the only way possible to exist and the most meaningful; you live like a clown, at the margins and always on the edge, yet the Clown has been appointed with the task of delivering prophetic messages. Every day you have to take stabs and stones and somehow be able to turn them into roses and cupcakes. It’s just a matter of practicing and getting comfortable with jumping into the void on a regular basis without a safety net.
The artist needs to know how to suffer beyond the typical threshold of suffering and, more importantly, he/she must suffer with style. Artists are gifted (and cursed) with diverse Indexes of atmospheres and tones, so they can choose how to suffer. They can suffer in shades of blue or in hues of greens, they can suffer in swirls or in triangles, old fashion or ultramodern, to Chopin’s melodies or to Grunge.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My artworks are invitations into parallel worlds and are populated by benevolent Beings. I have been working in the past year on a new collection centered around the ‘Watchers’, hybridized beings with human and non-human qualities.
The characters in my artworks are protective presences and they are pillars of calmness in between the many storms.
I would say my creations are my medicine and ignite my inner light when everything seems dark and in turmoil or when I doubt my very reason to exist.
I hope that other people would feel the same way about them or find in them a temporary access to softer realities.
What are your plans for the future?
I’m currently represented by ATO Gallery, which recently launched a new digital platform with a transparent authentication process and sales tracking system for collectors. (https://www.atoplatform.com).
Our goal is to offer an alternative format to show art and a creative incubator. I will show here my latest collection, called the “Watchers”. (See pictures). The Watchers are benevolent beings that have been emerging in the past year.
The idea is to deliver an archaic experience to the audience.
You can schedule an appointment for a private viewing by email or DM on Instagram.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ella_blisss/
Image Credits
Alex Tovar Photography
