NYAB Event - Ellen Rand Exhibition

Ellen Rand Exhibition

Figureworks

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Figureworks presents Ellen Rand’s latest oil paintings. In 2012, Figureworks hosted a striking two-person exhibition with Ellen and her grandmother, a highly successful portrait painter from the turn of the century. This further motivated Ellen to develop her figure-based series in more depth, resulting in this greatly anticipated solo exhibition.

Ellen had initially begun these paintings as diptychs, on two seamless adjacent wooden panels. A major health crisis put a stop to the work and after recovering from this extreme medical intervention, she picked up where she had left off. But following a new aesthetic instinct, Ellen started introducing triptychs and adding narrow wooden strips to separate her panels. It was not until weeks later that she recognized these spacers were a direct response to her surgeries, where she too had been cut up, scarred, and successfully put back together.

Aside from this moving back-story, the work stands alone as elegant, powerful and emotional. Each work tells its own story and many of the sensual reclining forms even move into a dreamlike landscape. An accomplished painter, Ellen is self-taught and began her career in stage design. Also an accomplished gallery director, Ellen is the proprietor of Art 101, a fine art gallery here in Williamsburg.