Ellen Ball

Living and working in New York City since 1994, she has been inspired by the city and its many industries, cultures, and the energy itself. Her background as a graphic designer and illustrator for the beauty industry influences her work and is evident in her choices of imagery and application. She makes large-scale mixed media paintings rendered on Belgian linen, often featuring iconic forms, distilled to their abstract minimal shapes, lines and contours, or photographic simplicity. By combining elaborate patterns, inspired uses of metal leaf, cutting, collage and oil paints, she creates original compositions and artworks. Deliberate juxtapositions and purposefully degraded, repurposed imagery prompt questions about beauty, perfection, and issues surrounding contemporary icon “worship”, devotional imagery and the pressures put on 21st century women. Her work is inspired by some contemporary artists as well as by graphic design, Arabic tiles and mosaics, fashion photography and the barrage of disposable imagery in today’s media. All these elements call to mind cultivated interpretations of perfection, beauty, the female form, sex symbols, icons, and idols.

Submitted by MvVO ART