Ellen Winkler is a printmaker and painter whose work I have known intimately for 3 and a half years.  In that time her images of the local landscape have grown through the bounds of more traditional notions of the genre.  An artist who cites Diebenkorn as well as local artist Jack Boul as long time influences, Winkler pushes beyond those references in her most recent drawings, monotypes and intaglio prints included in “Coming to the Edge”.

Ellen Winkler, The Tower , 2008, intaglio

  Fueled by an imminent move to another area of the country, Winkler chronicles the DC neighborhoods, ghosts and all, which she has known since the late 70s.    She departs from a former manner of conscious observation and calls on her imagination to conjure images of dark, whimsical cityscapes of tentative structures and roads swaying and meandering as if searching for a new world.  In the swirl of monolithic buildings complete with windows and chimneys, familiar shapes of circles, arrows and squares stamped in linear patterns across the plate attempt to lead a way.

  On daily explorations of the city’s redeveloped neighborhoods and accompanying alleys and side streets mostly around Dupont Circle, Winkler began to witness the uncertainty of our communities and environment.  She forms her own history of these places in her prints.  In “Little City”, wavering buildings inflict shadows on the land around them that become as significant as the structures themselves.   An alternative world seems present in these dark areas beside the buildings. 

  The dense markings in the background of “The Tower” compose a dark hedge imposing upon the wobbly structure.  The top of the building strains above the mass putting out tiny puffs of smoke in search of the other side.    A hint of an unstable future and the drama of the urban landscape come together in “Best Places to Work II”.  In this intaglio print, the structures are stacked thick in layers – thick in life - with arrows, pavement and shadows stretching from their bases and headed into the horizon.

  All of the prints in this exhibition are small scale and printed in black or sepia inks, both signatures of Winkler.  What has expanded is the artist’s trust in her unfettered imagination in a time of uncertainty and search.