Elise Remender
Beauty in Blue (2022)
Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 48”
The photorealistic swimmer serenely swanning on our red, white, and blue cover is by Elise Remender, an artist who shows her sunshine-soaked paintings — with an old-school-Hollywood Technicolor filter — at the White Room Gallery in East Hampton. Remender told East that she is “mesmerized by the theatrical pageantry” of Esther Williams movies from the 1940s, and by the kaleidoscopic patterns synchronized swimmers create with their bodies.
A fan of all things vintage, from clothes to music, she was living in Southern California when she found a group of swimmers called the Aqua Lilies: “I took a shot and asked them if any of their performers would be willing to do an underwater photo shoot with me. Using a cheap underwater camera and my iPhone, we put together an impromptu photo shoot at Mid-Century Modern Hotel in Palm Springs.” Despite the California setting, though, this bathing beauty could just as well be keeping cool in a kidney-shaped pool on Lily Pond or Cooper’s Neck Lane. She is the essence of Eisenhower-era glamour, ready to be photographed by Slim Arons while sipping Champagne.
To achieve her luminous aquatic effect, Remender starts with a flat canvas stapled to a table and uses a watercolor-like technique with fluid acrylic paint to mimic water. Then, she attaches it to a wall and blocks out her figure in opaque paint. Finally, she adds layers of glazed translucent paint to bring forward the skin tone and bathing suit.
Remender’s Bathing Beauties series really does make (two of) East’s editors want to don a ruffled swim cap and some matte red lipstick, too . . . but waterproof, of course.