Elissa Gore paints large, atmospheric landscapes. Her works are meditations on harmony in nature. She looks for places where the balance of natural elements: sky, earth, trees and water evoke a sense of "stopped time." This artist delights in changes in the atmosphere and the color of light. In these paintings, color and experience resonate to create form.

Once strictly a watercolorist, five years ago, Gore began to add oil pastel to her works to solidify the appearance of the land and trees. She explains, "When we look at a landscape we perceive two different kinds of light. The light that illuminates the sky is transmitted light and is very bright. I use watercolor to paint it, because I can get the purest bright color. When this light strikes the ground, it becomes reflected light, The colors that result are darker and more complex. I use oil pastel to describe them because of the rich solid darks it produces. The contrast between the two media mirrors this difference in the quality of light and gives my paintings their luminous skies." This year, she has refined her focus again, working out these ethereal compositions in oil paint on linen canvas.

Gore has exhibited widely, both in solo and group exhibitions across the United States. Her most recent solo show was last year in New York City at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts. She has received many awards in national juried exhibitions, including the bronze medal from the Baltimore Watercolor Society and merit awards from the Adirondacks National Exhibition of American Watercolors and the Watercolor Society of Alabama. The Cooperstown Art Association has honored her with awards five times in the past ten years. She is a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Catskill Center (New York State) and The Hambidge Center (Georgia.)

Besides many private collections, her works are displayed in six hospitals and over forty corporations, including American Express, Federal Reserve Bank of NY, Fidelity Investments, Hallmark, McGraw-Hill, Morgan Bank, Pfizer, TIAA/CREF, USAA, the U. S. State Department and the Vanguard Group.

Elissa Gore was born in Philadelphia in 1950. She studied painting and sculpture at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts and medical Illustration at the University of Texas. She has taught at Parsons School of Design, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Pace University and the New York Botanical Garden. Currently, she devotes all her time to landscape painting. Her studio is in Northern Manhattan. She also works on site in the Blue Ridge area of Virginia, coastal Maine and upstate New York.