Claire Elliott, Afterbloom

September 19 - October 24, 2025

Claire Elliott's debut exhibition with One Grand Gallery opens on September 19th, from 6-9p. Afterbloom explores the life cycle of poppies, amongst a variety of flora, as a bridge towards a larger dialogue surrounding the split between ornamental and functional nature. Elliott’s vivid landscapes address evergrowing concerns about human relationship with the natural world and how we define it. Her paintings focus on the physical structures and cultural origins of gardens, and the plants that are given permission to grow there. In landscaped spaces, there is often an illusion of control, a space carefully tended to. However, much like in works such as “Garden Encounter” or “The fantasy of perpetual abundance lying fallow” one can witness how things can quickly go awry, either from the persistent encroachment of weeds or through the confusion of shifting cycles in foliage. This combination can lead to surprising, unsettling encounters in the garden—plants that feel unfamiliar or unidentifiable. In these situations, as viewers we begin to question their mystery presence in the garden, are they foe or friend, a faded beauty or a spiky intruder.

Elliott selected poppies as her pivotal bloom for this collection of works for their abundance globally, their striking color, and their rich history. Prominent in ancient myth and modern culture, poppies have become symbols of resistance, fertility, and sacrifice. The genesis for the poppy pod sculptures displayed in tandem with this suite of paintings was a desire to capture, in a new medium, a different stage of the blooms. After witnessing these surprising stalks in a neglected corner of a garden, Elliott became fascinated with recreating this personally transformative moment. They are an exercise in futility and hope, echoes of how in an inhospitable climate, many plants will exist only in memory and facsimile.

Certain plants are only identifiable to the typical observer when they are in their most iconic blooming phases, not the unshowy seedheads or tender sprouts. In Afterbloom, Elliott seeks the moments when familiar plants can appear alien, like quavering poppy pods, or surprising, as with the dark, seed-filled remains of last summer’s zinnias. Understanding that a garden is built through control and exclusion, she examines the ways in which nature refuses to comply.


Claire Elliott (b.1985)  is an artist who lives and works in Portland, OR, where she is a member of Wave Contemporary.  Elliott’s work addresses concerns about the relationship between humans and landscape, how we define ‘nature’, and the idea of painting as a medium. Elliott received her BS from Skidmore College in 2007 and an MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University in 2014. Her work is represented in public and private collections nationally. Recent exhibitions include What’s Left on the Stem at Never Coffee,  Rituals at Wavelength Space, the WAVE Collective shows En Motion and The Nexus of Here, and A Creeping Normality at 1122 Gallery.


Screening with PAM CUT & Claire Elliott
September 18, 7-9p
Tickets here!

Press:

September PADA Art Guide Cover


@claire.elliott.art
claireelliott.com

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