Barbara working out new abstracts in her studio at ClearWater
Barbara Ellis states: "I’m fascinated by images that emerge when creating non-objective intuitional abstract art. The work tells me which lines, shapes and spaces should be coaxed to life, and I comply. The process is both healing and freeing as I work with acrylics, or mixed media on canvas, fabric or paper. Each mark made represents a step on my journey towards holistic self-realization, and the results are always surprising! I’m also interested in figurative abstract art. I've created images of African American ancestral memories inspired by poetry and personal experience. My overall hope is that my work motivates viewers to explore new ideas, or consider old ones differently."
Barbara has leased Studio #108 at ClearWater Artist Studios since 2012; After retiring from a corporate career in 2015 to focus on fine art full time, she was selected as one of the 2016 ‘class’ (Finalists) for that year’s ArtPop! Street Art Gallery featuring her painting, ‘River: Congo’ (the painting featured in the header top of this page). This garnered placement on one full-size physical billboard in the city and several digital billboards at the Charlotte-Douglas Airport as well as on public transit, for a year. in 2017 she decided to make abstract expressionist painting her focus; and, to work on larger canvases (a result of having ClearWater’s ‘Giant Easels’ to experiment upon). She developed a body of expressionist paintings and had her first solo exhibition held at ClearWater, ‘Abstracting Spirit,’ in the Main Gallery in October 2017. Since then her work has continued to be placed in galleries and shows, including ‘The Fine Art of ArtPop!’ (2018) at Elder Gallery of Contemporary Art in Charlotte. She was the first CW Artist to be featured in our ‘satellite’ gallery, the lobby of the Planning Department in Concord, NC’s new City Hall building in downtown Concord, in a solo show for the first quarter of 2019.
B.A., Commercial Art, City College of New York
Teaching: Abstract art (ages 6 -11)
www.barbaraellis.art
678.723.5578
