At first glance, you might consider the images created by Louisa Chase playful, sometimes even exuberant—simplified pictographs dancing in a composition of color, environmental forms and figurative representations suspended in layers of gestural mark-making. Upon closer inspection, the imagery reveals the introspective self-examination of an artist trying to reveal the ephemeral through a physical process—what she described as “a constant search to hold a feeling tangible.”

Louisa Lizbeth Chase (American, born Panama, 1951–2016) was raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A graduate of Syracuse University (BFA, Printmaking, 1973) and the prestigious graduate program at Yale University (MFA, 1975), Chase explored a variety of media, from experimental drawing to inflatable sculpture. She flourished in New York City early in her career and was one of few female artists to gain renown during the resurgence of painting in the 1980s, a movement generally associated with the artists of New Image painting and Neo Expressionism. In 1984, Chase’s work was included in the landmark exhibition Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained: American Visions of the New Decade, organized by the New Museum of Contemporary Art to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. That same year, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston presented the nationally-traveling solo exhibition New Currents: Louisa Chase. In 1991, Chase left Manhattan for Sag Harbor before settling in East Hampton, where she lived and worked until her death in 2016.

Courtesy of the Parrish Art Museum