440 Gallery is proud to present True to Form, a solo exhibition of abstract paintings and sculpture by Ellen Chuse. This show juxtaposes Chuse’s clay sculptures from the 1970s and her recent acrylic paintings on paper. Her current work features bold, archetypal shapes set against richly saturated backgrounds, with recurring motifs of totems and portals that echo her early sculpture. Now, Chuse connects decades of her creative practice. True to Form marks Chuse’s ninth solo exhibition at 440 Gallery.

Chuse was originally a sculptor, but the birth of her first child made the demands of working in clay impractical. A focus on drawing, first in charcoal and chalk, led to pastels and eventually to paint in saturated colors. In contrast, the clay sculptures featured in this exhibition, work of up to four decades past, are more modest in scale than her paintings and remain unglazed, rendered in a range of deep earth tones.

Chuse’s color palette has evolved to include soft pinks, purples, and blues, yet the forms retain intense darkness, layering greens and blues for a dense foundation. Her deceptively simple compositions, glorified by bold symbolic shapes, reward careful observation. Are they meditative or disorienting? Reassuring or ominous?

Her paintings and sculptural totems blur the boundary between painting and sculpture, the shared intention conflating disciplines often separated by dimension. Shapes echo across surfaces and structures as if recalling one another. Weight and lift, balance and burden, thread through both canvas and totem. Whether stacked or layered, each piece leans into the next. Are they holding themselves up, or being held down?

"While there are never any guarantees in life, as I approach 80 time becomes very finite. I wanted to seize this opportunity to show the older sculpture together with my related paintings. In my most recent paintings I struggle for balance — both literal and figurative. The work moves between meditative color and form and a desire to express the emotional disequilibrium that reflects the times in which we are living.”