Ellen Wong_After the Storm, August, Halcotts Center Road- Oil on Panel
ellen wong_Another View of the East Branch_Oil on Panel-1
Ellen Wong_Darling Cows, Dusk_oil on canvas-1
Ellen Wong_Esopus, July 23, Early Evening_watercolor,11×14
Ellen Wong_Rosy Colored Dusk,Vega Mountain Road, Roxbury, NY,_ Watercolor
Ellen Wong_Snow Turning to Rain on Passenger Window_Oil on Linen
For more than 20 years I have I have painted my life and the life around me. “My work is about nature; the land and our connection to it and the life it supports. Nature is never the same. Corot cautions “clouds that stand still are not clouds”.
I now find myself drawn to the places that embody the serene and quiet; the ordinary aspects of nature, rather than the spectacular and picturesque. I move, searching for the small moments and gestures – the play of light on a rain soaked road, golden farm fields freshly hayed , cows grazing in the breaking morning mist . I stop to sketch, to paint, and in the process I become one with this moment. Each place is specific, true to a moment in time and space. Yet, I have tried to remove the unessential, to become free from the slavish copying of nature, to paint for painting’s sake, as a surface with a life of its own. I want my hand, my marks to be revealed not hidden. I look for beauty in truth, the truth of a moment. I am not interested in “pretty pictures.”
Susan Hoover, Woodstock poet, says of Ellen’s recent work, “you forget that you are standing in a gallery. It puts the viewer into the present of the painting”
Address:121 Shepard Lane, Roxbury, NY 12474 (House and Studio off Golf Course Road)
Phone: 607 326-7362
Website: www.ellenwongfinearts.com
E-mail: elln4@yahoo.com
As a Studio Arts major at Brooklyn College, Ellen studied painting with Philip Pearlstein and Bob Henry. She studied painting at the Art Students League with Jack Faragasso and Dan Dickerson .
Ellen has been the recipient of numerous grants and recognitions, most notably the NYS Council of the Arts DEC Grant administered by the Roxbury Arts Group, a NEA fellowship, and a teacher/artist residency at Skidmore College.
She is a founding member of the Longyear Gallery, although currently on leave, and has had many one woman, and group shows in galleries and venues in upstate New York and New York City. Her work is in many private collections.
”Face of Farming,” a multimedia exhibit at RAG told the story of a working Catskill landscape, through video, audio, photographs, and formal oil portraits. It documented five of the last operating dairy farming families to memorialize and celebrate the art of working the land.
Recently Ellen was invited to exhibit with ADHOC in a public art installation, Outside Looking In. In March 2021 the Hanford Mills Museum invited her to present her work, Catskills Landscapes, Working in An American Tradition. That presentation can be viewed on the Hanford Mills website under InterActions or searching her name.