Virginia Elwood
📍New York/Los Angeles
How do you describe your work?I’m interested in forms that sit somewhere between landscape and body. Shapes emerge through accumulation, repetition, adjustment - grown into rather than simply depicted. My works on canvas are tactile, layered, dimensional, and seek to blur the boundary between craft and fine art. Hand-made acrylic fibers (extruded paint using a piping technique), yarn, and string are layered, looped and woven onto painted canvases. Form dictates the shape in this medium, creating new boundaries, barriers, and entry points. Considering the body as a shifting landscape, at once vulnerable and protected, I explore how we both shield and reveal ourselves. The nature of gouache makes my works on paper feel somewhat more precise. These paintings often have a more tattoo-informed clarity than my other work. Slightly unstable, surreal, biomorphic forms laced with cadenced lines, saturated, often unnatural palettes, and recurring symbolism merge landscape, body, and pattern. I would describe them as inner landscapes disguised as ecosystems. The processes are very different, but they inform one another and I think of them as part of the same language. Even in the more precise works, I’m trying to hold onto a sense of movement or instability so the image doesn’t resolve too cleanly.
What do you hope people take away when they see your work?When I create something I try to step aside and let the ideas take form in whatever medium they feel necessary…any examination on my part comes later. Sometimes the ideas/emotions choose a visual medium, other times they prefer to come as writing or music. My eyes aren’t on the audience when I’m deep in a creative process, so trying to evoke a particular emotion from a viewer is not high on my list of intentions. If I’m feeling an emotion when I create something, I’ll try to grab its tail and hang on until the end. I suppose what shakes out in the end are tea leaves. I’ll arrange and sort these tea leaves in my attempt to interpret and understand them. The final product is a painting or a story. If that final product has some emotional residue left on it, and a viewer is able to empathize and re-interpret the residue for themselves, I would consider that a success. What I’d hope for, if anything, is that the work offers something that can be returned to. Something that reveals or shifts over time, where a viewer might notice something new again and again.
“When I find the sweet spot, my filters dissipate and dissolve. Without the pressure of a specific audience or destination, curiosity takes over. Seeing what happens becomes more interesting than following a map”
As a tattooer, do you have different goals or intentions with your non-tattoo work?For the first decade of my career, I found most of my creativity within the practice of tattooing. The craft's boundaries and limitations acted as much needed scaffolding, making the infinite continent of creative possibilities less overwhelming and easier to navigate. I could lay tattooing on the table like a road map, and know which direction to take.
Like many tattooers, I grew up steeped in painting, drawing, and making, but I had no formal academic training. Tattooing was my true introduction and primary gateway into making art. Design and composition, drawing, color theory... the list goes on. These skills were learned on the job and through many generous mentors and co-workers. Knowing the boundaries and structures of tattooing made it safe to explore the far corners. But they also shaped, and at times limited, how I approached creating art, what it meant to be an artist, and what I was allowing myself to explore.
Now, my art practice aims to be an intentional departure from those familiar structures. I’m drawn to the dynamic tension at the intersection of my surrender, and the grounding influence of those established boundaries. In that balance, there's always a lesson, an unlocking, or something sort of magical. Something I can’t fully predict or replicate. The breadcrumbs I leave don’t always lead me back. I suppose that’s why we call it an art practice?
I have a more introspective, less negotiated conversation with myself during my studio work. When I find the sweet spot, my filters dissipate and dissolve. Without the pressure of a specific audience or destination, curiosity takes over. Seeing what happens becomes more interesting than following a map. I’m more inclined to embrace ambiguity and risk, and to prioritize the process of blooming and unfolding over a predetermined outcome.
Virginia works in New York and Los Angeles
@virginiaelwood
Gouache on Paper
16” x 20”
By Virginia Elwood
The Floor is Porous -
An abstract exploration of boundaries and permeability - where roots, memories, and imagined forms drift across the surface.
Giclée Print on archival paper
12×15” or 16×20”
To convey and recreate the sculptural and textured elements of the original canvas, it was photographed rather than scanned to create this high quality Giclée print.
Open edition • Hand-signed by the artist
Ships unframed
By Virginia Elwood
Gouache on paper from the ongoing series, Make Real Flowers Jealous
Giclée Print on archival paper
12 × 15” or 16 × 20”
Open edition • Hand-signed by the artist
Ships unframed
By Virginia Elwood
UnBecoming -
A meditation on transformation, unraveling, and the beauty found in letting go.
Paint, string, yarn on Canvas
11” x 14”
A note from Virginia:
This piece is from my series in which yarn, string and hand-made acrylic fibers (extruded from paint using a piping technique) are woven, looped, and sculpted onto the painted canvas, resulting in a sculptural surface that is both protective and porous.
Creating new boundaries, barriers, and entry points to explore the body as a shifting landscape - at once vulnerable and safeguarded.
I’m drawn to the tactile: lines become contours, scars, rivers, or roots. Each piece treats the body as a landscape, exploring how we both shield and reveal ourselves. Using materials that sit between “craft” and “fine art,” I aim to blur the line between what’s decorative, functional, and expressive.
By Virginia Elwood
Misplace In Between -
A looping, sculptured landscape of liminality, celebrating the space between arrival and departure.
Paint, string and yarn on Canvas
11” x 14”
A note from Virginia:
This piece is from my series in which yarn, string and hand-made acrylic fibers (extruded from paint using a piping technique) are woven, looped, and sculpted onto the painted canvas, resulting in a sculptural surface that is both protective and porous.
Creating new boundaries, barriers, and entry points to explore the body as a shifting landscape - at once vulnerable and safeguarded.
I’m drawn to the tactile: lines become contours, scars, rivers, or roots. Each piece treats the body as a landscape, exploring how we both shield and reveal ourselves. Using materials that sit between “craft” and “fine art,” I aim to blur the line between what’s decorative, functional, and expressive.
By Virginia Elwood
Gouache on paper from the ongoing series, Make Real Flowers Jealous
Giclée Print on archival paper
12×15” or 16×20”
Open edition • Hand-signed by the artist
Ships unframed
By Virginia Elwood
Misplace In Between -
A looping, sculptured landscape of liminality, celebrating the space between arrival and departure.
Giclée Print on archival paper
12×15” or 16×20”
To convey and recreate the sculptural and textured elements of the original canvas, it was photographed rather than scanned to create this high quality Giclée print.
Open edition • Hand-signed by the artist
Ships unframed
By Virginia Elwood
UnBecoming -
A meditation on transformation, unraveling, and the beauty found in letting go.
Giclée Print on archival paper
12×15” or 16x20”
To convey and recreate the sculptural and textured elements of the original canvas, it was photographed rather than scanned to create this high quality Giclée print.
Open edition • Hand-signed by the artist
Ships unframed
By Virginia Elwood
Static Fall -
A woven moment of tension and release - caught between motion and stillness, craft and art
Paint, string and yarn on Canvas
11” x 14”
A note from Virginia:
This piece is from my series in which yarn, string and hand-made acrylic fibers (extruded from paint using a piping technique) are woven, looped, and sculpted onto the painted canvas, resulting in a sculptural surface that is both protective and porous.
Creating new boundaries, barriers, and entry points to explore the body as a shifting landscape - at once vulnerable and safeguarded.
I’m drawn to the tactile: lines become contours, scars, rivers, or roots. Each piece treats the body as a landscape, exploring how we both shield and reveal ourselves. Using materials that sit between “craft” and “fine art,” I aim to blur the line between what’s decorative, functional, and expressive.
By Virginia Elwood
Gouache on paper from the ongoing series, Make Real Flowers Jealous
Giclée Print on archival paper
8 x 10.5”
Open edition • Hand-signed by the artist
Ships unframed
By Virginia Elwood
Static Fall -
A woven moment of tension and release - caught between motion and stillness, craft and art
Giclée Print on archival paper
12×15” or 16×20”
To convey and recreate the sculptural and textured elements of the original canvas, it was photographed rather than scanned to create this high quality Giclée print.
Open edition • Hand-signed by the artist
Ships unframed
A note from Virginia:
This print is from my series in which yarn, string and hand-made acrylic fibers (extruded from paint using a piping technique) are woven, looped, and sculpted onto the painted canvas, resulting in a sculptural surface that is both protective and porous.
Creating new boundaries, barriers, and entry points to explore the body as a shifting landscape - at once vulnerable and safeguarded.
I’m drawn to the tactile: lines become contours, scars, rivers, or roots. Each piece treats the body as a landscape, exploring how we both shield and reveal ourselves. Using materials that sit between “craft” and “fine art,” I aim to blur the line between what’s decorative, functional, and expressive.
By Virginia Elwood
Gouache on paper from the ongoing series, Make Real Flowers Jealous
Giclée Print on archival paper
8 x 10.5”
Open edition • Hand-signed by the artist
Ships unframed
By Virginia Elwood