Barbara Ellmann
Barbara Ellmann · Source: New York Artists Circle · Rights retained by the original rights holders
- Medium
- Encaustic, Ink
- Based in
- New York
- Practice
- Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Works on Paper
Barbara Ellmann was born in Michigan and lives in New York, where she works as an educator at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and Lincoln Center Education. She has been selected for residencies at Yaddo, th… Full biography
Biography
Barbara Ellmann was born in Michigan and lives in New York, where she works as an educator at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and Lincoln Center Education. She has been selected for residencies at Yaddo, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, and Haslla Art World Museum in Gangneung, South Korea. She has also produced public works for the Van Siclen Avenue subway station in Brooklyn, a bus shelter in Summit, NJ, and The Cambria Heights Branch Library in Queens. Ellmann’s work is in the collections of Peter Norton; Leonard Nimoy; NYU Langone Medical Center; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University; the Peter J. Sharp Foundation; the Four Seasons Hotel and Resort, in Marrakech, Morocco; the Haslla Art World Museum, Gangneung-Si, South Korea; and the United States Embassy in Kampala, Uganda. Her traveling exhibition AN OPEN BOOK has been shown in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and in Palm Desert, California. Ellmann co-founded the New York Artists Circle and served as Director of the group from 1996-2015.
Artist statement
I am interested in close looking and examining how parts come together to create a whole. My 24” square encaustic paintings explore the way that we process and catalog visual experience by using varying degrees of abstraction and kinetic juxtapositions of form, color, and pattern to suggest fleeting impressions, connections, and memories. Often related to place and making sense of space, the paintings chronicle my experience as a New Yorker and a world traveler confronting an overabundance of visual stimulation. I exhibit these paintings in large grids of varying dimensions. Installations are site-specific but unfixed; individual paintings may appear and reappear in entirely different groupings, allowing for unique interactions among visual records of places I’ve inhabited in the near and distant past. When brought into conversation with one another in the gallery, the grids present opportunities for visitors to bring their own associations to the abstracted imagery. Viewers are invited to construct their own meaning by navigating a visual pathway from panel to panel—following the juxtapositions of color, shape, and composition and using their own lived experiences and sense of space as a guide.
