ABOUT ME
Art is an essential part of who I am. I have known this for as long as I can remember. It is perhaps the only thing that I have ever known for sure. But to arrive at the point where I felt worthy of expressing myself I had to wait until it was unbearable not to do so.
I am a shy introvert, and I struggled to put myself out there for many years. But early on I felt that my desire to make art and my insecurity were in complete conflict. However this creeping urgency to create art became hard to ignore. Finally during a trip to Paris, following a day visiting art galleries, I broke down crying in front of the Eiffel Tower and decided it was time to make art a part of my life.
My images reverberate with this search for self assurance and serenity, and my own nude body is featured in each piece. I originally began using myself as a model because it gave me a lot of control over my compositions, and I didn’t have the ability to pay someone else. However using my body has caused my work to develop into something highly personal. When we are nude we are at our most vulnerable, and I have come to see my work as a way to reconcile with the shy, insecure and fearful pieces of myself. There is also something I love about showing myself naked when in fact I am severely uncomfortable being undressed in front of others. It is a practice in being more open and allowing people into my world when in my real life I struggle to do so. That said I don’t see my prints as self-portraits, but rather physical representations of emotional states of being. Male or female, my hope is that you see a piece of yourself reflected back to you in each image.
Ellen has a background in Art History. She completed her Masters degree in Contemporary Art at Christie’s Education in 2011, and received her BA in Art History from John Cabot University, Rome in 2010. She began to develop an interest in printmaking while studying the linocuts of Picasso and Der Blaue Reiter during her time at Christie’s, and she is largely self-taught in the craft. In 2022 Ellen added gouache painting to her practice. Her work is featured regularly at The Affordable Art Fair in both New York and London, and in 2019 she was selected as the official print artist of the New York fair. She lives in South East London with her husband Andrea whom she met while studying in Rome.
Her work is represented by JoAnne Artman Gallery, DECORAZON Gallery, and Tom Cox Gallery.
