Miles McEnery Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of new paintings by Inka Essenhigh, on view 27 April through 3 June 2023 at 511 West 22nd Street. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by Suzette McEvoy. 

Inka Essenhigh creates paintings that celebrate the beauty of the natural world as seen through the mind’s eye. Rather than outwardly painting the world around her, Essenhigh’s ethereal landscapes begin with a sense of place, both imagined and real. She composes her paintings intuitively, painting what’s envisioned in her mind. Often skipping preparatory drawings, she starts translating her visualization directly onto canvas with enamel paint. Allowing her to build color and render precise details, the use of enamel results in compositions that lay flat on the surface while emanating a glossy sheen. 

Articulating something imagined into something seen, Essenhigh’s paintings are a culmination of the surreal and fantastical. Her palette glows with hazy evergreens, electric teals, and auras of magenta. The subjects range from anthropomorphized flora to skittering kittens poised to pounce. Dreamscapes of cascading cliffs and lush forests are framed by tendrilled branches with personified faces appearing out of the mountains and foliage. Floral Fireworks teeters on the classical nature morte, enlivened by bursts of petals and weeping pollen, while Flower King transforms a bloom into a regal monarch towering over a reclining leafed subject. 

Splitting her practice between studios in coastal Maine and Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Essenhigh’s surroundings implicitly seep into her compositions. Mossy forest floors and never-ending estuaries conjure up the serenity of untouched Maine landscapes. A menagerie of dancers gathers in Rave Scene while sprightly onlookers eagerly peer past a butterflied bouncer, reflecting the bustling celebrations of city life. “Liberated from the exigencies of everyday life,” McEvoy writes, “Essenhigh’s animate and assertively beautiful paintings awaken the senses to the more-than-human world.”