Intoxicated by the miraculous unfolding of nature, Ensrud challenged himself to paint the evolving beauty of landscapes. During his decades of European travels, he hauled his own easel, canvas and paints up mountain slopes, into fields and forests of foliage, alongside streams and rivers as well as vast seasides. Being so absorbed by the scenery he was observing, he often painted into dim evening light, unaware of time passing. In one instance while painting in the Alps, he fainted from exhaustion after several hours of uninterrupted work on one painting and was then revived by curious onlookers. His explorations on canvas vary from rich Expressionistic brushwork of shapes and planes to more flatly painted, linear spaces. His insatiable hunger for capturing wide panoramic views endow his paintings with an unerring sense of spatial expansiveness and light, inspired by his mentor, Oskar Kokoschka. At times, he also captures his landscapes in the simplest of forms and shapes, conveying an innocent child-like wonder.
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