Elsa Marie Keefe is an artist based in New Paltz, New York. Her work revolves around the nude human form and nature. Digital Photography is the basis for her work, while mixed media is another primary focus of her creations. Elsa’s art is currently focused around the duality of innocence versus sexuality, and has an ongoing narrative surrounding oneness, our inherent connection with mother earth, body positivity, and healing. She photographs the human form in natural spaces, void of manmade objects. The primary theme or title for her body of work is ‘Human Nature,’ with sub-sections including, ‘RAW' (raw photographic pieces), ‘Words’ (poetic and evocative words painted and written over the raw images), ‘Multiplicity of Selves’ (overlay series with multiple people in one frame representing the different personalities and sides that we all have), ‘illusions’ (overlays, abstract photoshop work), ‘Mixed Media’ (large scale mixed media works), ‘Heaven on Earth’ (original series of cloudscape and landscape overlays), ’Natural Sex’ (The Vulva Project - a close up exploration and healing journey surrounding body parts that yield the highest sense of vulnerability and debate in our culture). Elsa has been making art her whole life, however she has been working as a professional artist, utilizing the human body in nature as her primary medium for 11 years. She has been showing in galleries and selling her work predominantly in New York City, where she has lived for most of her adult life.

Elsa began making art as a young child growing up on the northshore of Boston. She grew up with a family that honored the sacred nature of the body and land. There was no television in her childhood home, as her parents took great care to avoid the side effects of subliminal messaging for their children. Elsa has been making art for as long as she can remember. Originally it was a way of passing the time as a child, eventually becoming her therapy. Although she was a very conscientious student and athlete during her formative years, art was always there, carrying her through the hard times that she encountered as a young female exposed to the norms of Western Society. Her mental space was defined by the times, growing up during the 90’s and early 2000’s, where consumerism was at an all time high, especially in her extremely upper-class white suburban hometown by the name of Manchester-by-the-Sea.

Elsa got her B.A. in Strategic Communications from Elon University in North Carolina, and was an informal double major in Fine Art Photography. After working in fashion, design and PR in her earlier years, it became evident that she was not enthused by big business and commercialism. After spending ample time in the photo studio, capturing and creating images that mirrored many of the Vogue features which had molded her mind as a young adult, drawing on subliminal inspiration from her early idols such as Mario Testing and Marco Glaviano, replicating the sensual imagery of Victoria’s Secret ads and high-end fashion photography, she realized that she was contributing to the elusive standard of beauty that was corroding her very own mind and generation, perpetuating the source of the problem from which all of her personal and collective trauma arose. From this point forward, she stopped working with clothing and began her journey with nude photography. Spending time outside, naked in nature as a child, made the transition to the nude in nature photographic experience, one that came with great ease and provided extreme catharsis. In her mid twenties, after a prolonged period of hardships, highs and lows in NYC, Miami and New Mexico, she took her digital photography to another level by adding pieces of collected nature onto the physical works of art. Just after moving back in New York in 2018, Elsa found herself entering the formal nudist or “naturist” community. Over recent years, her full immersion into the nudist lifestyle has shaped some of her work and informed her ongoing narrative, including facilitating the production of nude women’s healing circles and photographic experiences alongside her art.

Elsa has always experienced and approached her art as a healing modality. Over the years, as she struggled with her own physical and mental health, photography and art has provided a backbone for her life, and a creative lens from which to view her individual and collective reality. Capturing her body and friends over time, changing with the seasons and ages, her art has become a lifestyle, a time capsule from which to understand the eternal and exponential transitions of the earth at this time. A mirror of truth, the nude in nature content, enduring visual landscapes, challenge modernity, allowing the viewer to experience the earth as it once was, as it still is, and as it always will be.