Elise Lauterbach is a painter who makes contemporary, historically informed images with classical techniques and materials. Her deliberate compositions explore domestic life, using color to create emotional intensity in both landscapes and still life paintings. Multi-layered, textural brushwork builds a complex yet fresh surface. Her ceramic work builds on an interrogation and exploration of domestic space and women’s work.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, she grew up backstage, watching her mother direct ballet performances, and spent many happy hours in classes at Memphis College of Art. Elise was educated at Haverford College, where she studied painting with Ying Li. She then worked with Li, Lennart Anderson and Dan Gustin at a Residency in Montecastello de Vibio in Umbria. At Oxford University and the University of Virginia she furthered her English studies, where her dissertation research focused on the 18th Century Landscape in Literature, with a concentration in the History of the Book as a Physical Object. She taught English at a small liberal arts college for eight years before returning to Virginia to homestead and paint.

She is married to the author Preston Lauterbach. They have 3 children.

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