Ellen Sherman is a visual artist living and working in Ann Arbor, MI.
Ellen graduated from Michigan State University in 2008 with a BFA in Studio Art and then moved to Miami, Florida where she worked as a lead artist and designer in the mobile game industry. After a few years of working on many award winning titles, she left her position in 2011 to focus on her own art full time. In 2017 she and her husband moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan where she has since set up her studio and small gallery space.
Ellen’s work currently explores the forging of our own personal folklore through the meeting of hard and soft processes; moments planned and unplanned. She works in acrylic, wood and cut up canvas.
Her work is in collections in the US, Canada, Japan, Greece, and the Netherlands.
My work is about identities; shifting, growing, myself, others, truthful and less so. Through the exploration of materials and a continually morphing process I am seeking to use my work as a metaphor to this human experience. We chop away at ourselves, throw out pieces, keep others (for good or ill) and emerge as a quilt of moments and mystery on the other end. I do the same with my work; paint, cut, hide some pieces away for years, bring others out into the light.
My process is impulse and intuition; reacting to what is happening on the surface of the canvas in that moment; pools of paint moved by gravity, water soaking through a page, combined with an editing process that might be years out, or immediate and delivered by swift scissors, the moment repurposed into something else.
By sharing these moments I hope to encourage the viewer to do the same. What would your collection of pieces look like? Is it something you would recognize? What is the nature of authenticity and how do we embrace/turn from it? These are some of the themes that carry me through my processes.