Emily Ludwig Shaffer’s vibrant canvases superbly explore the realm of the uncanny, situating mundane objects in physically improbable arrangements. Painting with nearly imperceptible brushstrokes, Shaffer imbues a degree of naturalism into her decidedly surreal compositions. Using elements of weaving, such as lattices and braids, Shaffer draws influence from architecture and vegetation but pushes these forms to imaginative heights. Painted in 2018, the year after Shaffer graduated with her MFA from Columbia University, Bay Leaf Wrapped Night functions as a portal into a starry landscape in which moonlight softly illuminates verdant hills. Recalling the polished finish and visual puzzles of Rene Magritte and the dramatized flora and geologic formations of Georgia O’Keeffe, Bay Leaf Wrapped Night pulls from the lushness of the natural world with fantastical visual treatment. Shaffer sets her box within a devoid landscape, a liminal space in which the box serves as a secondary frame within the frame of the canvas. Gesturing towards science fiction, Shaffer invites us into the otherworldly, mystifying space in a playful imagining of all that looms within unexplored portals.
