Ellen Altfest

MK Gallery presents the first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery of paintings by Ellen Altfest (born New York City, 1970). The exhibition will include early paintings of rocks and trees in the landscape, paintings of plants and gourds in the studio, and works from a series of male nude studies that Altfest first began in 2006.

Altfest’s work calls to mind the precise naturalism of early Lucian Freud, and finds affinities in others who painted from life such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Stanley Spencer, but she has developed her own distinct approach to figurative and representational painting since graduating with an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1997. In Milton Keynes, Altfest will be showing almost twenty oil paintings from 1998 to the present, including three new works.