Elissa Brown

Elissa often recalls being at her grandmother's feet as a child, enthralled by her folk stories and fairy tales. It was these adventures in imagination that sparked her interest in narrative and eventually her own pursuit of expressive storytelling. Elissa finished her formal education with an MFA in Mixed Media at Syracuse University, where she nurtured her first love of illustration and planted seeds for what would become The Freckled Army collection. Elissa creates what initially feel like familiar landscapes, but upon closer inspection, also entertain fanciful and surprising details that keep you searching for more. Her pieces work to sublimate the narrative of play, allowing for easy immersion into stories that are only fully formed by the experience of each viewer. The process of wood-cut illustration is labor intensive: layered birch has been drawn, cut, and painted with line work burned into the wood. The burned drawings lend to the appeal of the work's graphic nature, while giving the wood itself a vintage touch with the aged patina of the charred edges. The drawing and cutting out of characters and objects, followed by their stacking, and layering into new environments, creates depth and adds to the fantastic element of surprise found in the details.