Esther Messner uses pencils and acrylics to create large-format canvases depicting her friends and family. She combines gestural abstract painting with intricate pencil drawings, the spontaneity of the photographic act with time consuming painterly execution, and the ephemeral nature of the moment with the permanent nature of the painted image.

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The starting point of her artwork is a photograph: The artist takes pictures of her friends and family in everyday life, on vacation, and on evenings out. The ephemeral nature of the photographic inception is transformed through careful selection and a time-consuming artistic process using pencil and acrylic paints. Beginning with a spatula to form a textured background she then works with pencil, often in numerous layers. In this way, from a matt and abstract background, emerge shiny, metallic portraits that shimmer lively in various nuances of color according to the way light falls on them. Lively, vivid portraits emerge from these contrasts.

Esther Messner graduated 2007 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna with a Master’s Degree in painting.