By 
Years ago, Jean O’Reilly Barlow, the artist and founder of Interi, formed a close friendship with another artist, Elena Rousseau, through a joint appreciation: fragments. Elena began to collaborate with Jean and collect 18th century gilded Rococo fragments and it inspired her creation of many pieces from her sculptural canvas collections. Now, Interi presents the artist along with the meaning behind her work:
“The work of any artist is ultimately this— to give observation and imagination a body. It is to look at the world closely and slowly and, through the service of a particular medium, to create a kind of portal that spans the gap between matter and spirit, crosses every demographic divide, and dares both individuals and societies into transformation.
My artistic practice is a unitive exercise in which historic preservation meets modern art. I am a mixed media artist interested in themes of transcendence and rebirth, and the pieces I create are visual enactments of the beauty of evolution in which the past is both honored and included but also transcended. Often appearing in my work are Italian giltwood fragments sourced primarily in Florence and the region of Tuscany. These 17th and 18th century artifacts, which are finite in number and difficult to source, have been separated from their original places of belonging. With sculpted canvas, gesso, plaster, and paint I create new settings for these artifacts which are worthy of them. I teach them to begin again. Sometimes I even adorn their scars with minerals and gems, transforming these relics of the past into works of luxe modern art which have a voice and a message: renaissance for all.”
— Elena Rousseau
Elena Rousseau is a mixed media artist seeking to describe the defiant beauty and spectral opulence of the human spirit through abstract wall sculptures made from torn canvas, gesso, plaster, ash, mineral pigments, 24KT gold leaf, and Italian giltwood fragments on hand built pine frames. These sculptures are unapologetically beautiful and become statement pieces in any room they adorn. Their extravagance of form, movement, and windblown theatricality justify the praise that this body of work is “a reinvention of Baroque decor.”
ICON III
Canvas, gesso, marble paste, 17th century Italian giltwood fragment, 24k gold leaf, Italian dark ocher, wax, ash and acrylic on board.
12″ H x 30″ W x 6″ D
ICON II
Canvas, gesso, marble paste, 17th century Italian giltwood fragment, 24k gold leaf, Italian dark ocher, wax, ash and acrylic on board.
12″ H x 30″ W x 6″ D
The Florence Flood body of work is similar to Elena’s Icons but relies less on gilding and highlights instead the rare flood fragments themselves, setting them against buon fresco plaster and adorning them with sculpted canvas. These 17th and 18th century artifacts were drawn by hand from the flooded streets of Florence in 1966 when the Arno burst its banks. Silt from the event still clings to them, and the once mirrored gilding is entirely absent. Neutral, grounding, and historically significant, these pieces are limited in number and carry a strong presence.
TORCH IV & V
Fresco plaster, sculpted canvas, Florence Flood giltwood fragment, gesso, ash, green earth, and 24k shell gold on board.
30″ H x 12″ W x 6″ D
Elena Rousseau is a mixed media artist living in the Shenandoah mountains of Virginia outside of DC with her husband and four children. Her practice is informed by her studies in Renaissance art, sacred art, ornamental art, philosophy, and poetry. Having studied in Florence, Italy at Scuola Lorenzo de Medici as a young artist and most recently at The Florence Academy of Art, she works to honor the city whose aspect and energy continues to inform her life and art. In her dedicated studio space, she enacts the artistic ritual that is as old as humanity itself: the act of giving imagination a body.
