It’s Okay To Be Aspirational Through Art

You know that very specific feeling when an outfit just feels SO GOOD and everything fits right, the pieces work together, and you walk out of the house feeling like the most put-together version of yourself? The version you're always sort of moving toward?

That's the feeling I'm trying to make for your walls.

My work is of women who carry themselves a certain way - confident, present, in possession of themselves - and I paint them with just enough detail that you bring the rest: your own story, your own version of who she is and what she's about to do.

Which is why the reviews of my work never say "it's beautiful" (okay, sometimes they say it's beautiful) - they say things like "it gives me strength every time I look at it," and "I sit with my coffee every morning and I feel something," and "I've never seen anything like this before."

That’s the strength and power I’m bringing to you with my empowering vision - plus it doesn't come off at the end of the day, it doesn't go out of style, and every single morning when you walk past it with your coffee it does the whole thing all over again.

I'm Elise Mendelle, and I make original figurative paintings of women - women who own it, who carry themselves a certain way, who are in the middle of becoming something - for the woman at home who sees herself in them and thinks: yes, actually. That's me.