Cheltenham art better every year, by Victoria Donohoe, The Philadelphia Inquirer:
All the picking and choosing among the exhibit's 52 works that were taken from 272 entries this time was done by Susan Rosenberg, the Philadelphia Museum of Art's assistant curator of modern and contemporary art, which also might seem to give the show a special cachet.....Reflecting that diversity are the artists she has singled out for awards, Elise Freda among them. The artists here do quite often possess expressive freedom. This is why Rosenberg chose them, and why this is an art show you must see and savor.

Repetition by design, by Michelle Carroll, Poughkeepsie Journal:
"In these pieces, a dialogue between each layer, each shape used is formed where you can really see the layers and you can still see the progression of the thought process by the artists," said Donise English, director of Steel Plant Studios Art Gallery at Marist College. Freda's abstract, angular and structural pieces reveal the encaustic technique of fusing beeswax, both plain and with pigment, on wood. Because beeswax leaves a translucent film, each layer is visible. "I like to put a lot down to cover images up and then scrape parts away," said Freda. "What you can see and can't see adds a little mystery."

Layer it on, by Noah Fleisher, Taconic Newspapers:
Elise Freda's nine encaustic with collage pieces take a somewhat different tack. Beginning with images that are quite direct, Freda layers on the perspective with pigmented wax fused to the surface of the painting. The feeling of the pieces like that of memory, is one that is distorted, highlighted and refracted. The original image becomes as many things as the viewer can find in it. "There's a certain mystery in being able to see down into the depths." she says. "Mine are images that reveal and conceal themselves at the same time." The original primal images of Freda's works, somewhat spare, speak to a place of gut response, rather than intellectual scrutiny.

Profiles of local artists. Elise A. Freda: Artist, by Elaine Dantzler, The River Reporter.
Elise Freda’s paintings involve evolution—not Darwin’s, but the gradual emergence of the shapes and textures created by building up and scraping down layers of wax. Freda appreciates the properties of wax—the way it impregnates, preserves, hardens fast, and lends permanence—and so finds it perfect for creating textures, for applying thin layers with varying degrees of opacities through fusing, and for floating images in and out.

Minimalism gets a sense of humor, review by Nancy Stapen, The Boston Globe:
Minimalism of a very different sort is on view at the Randall Beck Gallery, which is showing three New England artists who work on a small scale. Two of the artists’ images appear abstract, but they’re inspired by nature. In Elise Freda’s case, fossils and ancient artifacts are translated into oval shapes. The white ground in which they float shows traces of many previous layers of color, sensitively handled, which form an analogy to the layers of time.

Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery/ Portsmouth. 5th Annual Omer T. Lassonde Juried Exhibition, review by Margot Clark, Art New England.
Elise Freda should be counted among emerging young painters. Her work has evolved from a dematerialized biomorphic abstraction toward more volumetric forms rendered through a layering of color-shot grays that take full advantage of the translucent wax medium.

An Inviting Abstract, review by Alice Fuld, The Keene Sentinel.
Elise Freda’s work on display in the Killian Gallery is as dominated by blue as Emmart-Lieberman’s is by red. Freda starts with rocks, or rather, the cracks in rocks. Her approach is illustrated by a photograph and two sketchy studies for a larger work. The photograph is an extreme close up of fractures in a rock. A quick pencil study retains some sense of the photo, while in pastel only a few of the lines are left. Freda’s large finished works, oil on paper, retain a sense of boulders, if you are aware of her process, but they are pleasing, orderly abstractions in shimmering shades of blue.

Sharon Arts Center/Sharon—Interior/Exterior: Four Visions, review by Margot Clark, Art New England.
The two most abstract painters are inspired by landscape forms. Elise Freda has long been attuned to coastal tidal pools and splintered, sea-wet rocks. A linear network fills the canvas and expands beyond the margins as it flows through an atmospheric blue-gray ground, punctuated with flickers of intense color—a yellow here, a magenta there. The most engaging compositions feature dramatic changes in density and scale of the rounded shapes emerging from skeins of lines, plus sudden concentrations of dark values and strong color accents, as in "Landscape with Birds."

NH Art Association, review by Staci Milbouer , The Nashua Telegraph.
But it would have been refreshing to see more examples fine expressionistic work such as "Open Heart" —a stunning and daring oil and wax painting by Milford artist Elise Freda.

A broad spectrum. Faber Birren Color Award Show highlights experiments in color, review by Kate Jennings, Fairpress.
In the first floor gallery, Elise Freda’s "Blueprint" harkens back to cave drawings at Lascaux. This oil and pastel on paper is a series of blue and black markings on a gray, stone-colored background. These curved and linear schemata recall animal forms, and the look of erasure heightens the sense of age and lends a certain mystery to the painting.

Blackthorne Gallery/Portsmouth. Abstract Visions: Elise Freda and Lydia Staab, review by Margot Clark, Art New England.
Here two young painters seem to reconsider some of the undeveloped possibilities of 1950’s gestural abstraction. As in the case of earlier styles such as impressionism and cubism, rapid reduction to a commercially palatable formula made painterly abstraction look like a dead end to most ambitious artists in succeeding years. After a quarter-century, new sensibilities without pretense to the cosmic are again able to use gestural means to make individual statements. Weather and sea change inhabit Elise Freda’s horizontally expansive pictorial spaces, which suggest cloud cover or tidal foam in low-keyed, bluish to lavender grays. Emerging from the flux are gently rounded shapes, given soft-edged definition by black pastel interlaces and evanescent volume by off-white scumble or dashes of high-keyed orange, red-violet, or cerulean. The emotional tone is contemplative, though in "Ancient Flight" the black skeins dance rhythmically across the surface, while in "Landscape with Birds", a diagonal, black line flow establishes an emphatic focal node.

The Life of an artist, by Kathy Cleveland, The Milford Cabinet.
To evoke a sense of the passage of time in her abstract paintings, Freda puts down on canvas a great deal of paint, then scrapes off layers to reveal earlier incarnations of her work. The results of building, scraping and rebuilding echo the weathering process of nature.