If you’ve visited our Wicker Park location any time in the last few months, you’ve seen her art: Ellie Rivera is our Artist of the Quarter, showing colorful illustrations with us through the rest of October. 

While Rivera has experimented with several styles, her work currently follows the style of ligne-claire, including meticulous realism and detail within her often pastel-colored drawings, made interesting and engaging through occasional pops of bright color. The style suppresses the viewer’s sense of depth and visual importance through single-weight lines. Rivera, therefore, may highlight whatever she chooses to assign importance to with color—and she does. 

She is part of an emerging class of women artists pushing against the portrayals of sex and sexuality. Rather than allow sexuality to be forced upon or assigned to them, these artists take ownership over it, choosing whether, when, and how their art—and they—are consumed. This is evident in Rivera’s drawings which, at first glance, appear to simply be pin-ups of conventionally attractive women, and upon further inspection, include salient and disturbing details. A portrait of a woman at a stripper pole turns into a blood-covered woman gripping a scythe. An image of a crying woman includes a knife protruding from her shoulder, cherry-red blood dripping from its blade down her back. These brutal juxtapositions decry, deconstruct, de-emphasize social normalcy. 

Rivera is in good company; Cindy Sherman, Ilona Szwarc, and Lora Mathis have made thematically similar, if materialistically different work to public and critical acclaim. 

You can (and should) purchase Rivera’s work by contacting the artist directly at elizabethriveracontact1@gmail.com to purchase work on display at Dimo’s or to request a commission.

Keep up with Rivera on Instagram @10bagsoflemons, and follow us too @dimospizza. We’ll post good stuff. We promise.