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ELLEN E. BAER

Drawing, Painting, Visual / Media

My paintings celebrate nature and the power of the spirit that I see reflected in natural forms and forces.

About the Artist

Ellen Baer’s artwork was selected by the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies Program and was on exhibition for five years in Niamey, Niger.  In addition, her paintings have been featured in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and cultural centers, including the Bernice Kish Gallery in Columbia Maryland; Wohlfarth Galleries and Touchstone Gallery in Washington DC; and the Brentwood Arts Exchange in Brentwood, Maryland. Baer’s work is in private and corporate collections, including the Westin South Coast Plaza in Costa Meso, California; Ksi Management Corporation in Centreville, Virginia; and Off the Hook Productions in Hollywood, California.

ELLEN E. BAER website Ellen Baer

Artist's Statement

My paintings celebrate nature and the power of the spirit, which I see reflected in natural forms and forces. In several disparate series of abstract works, I use different means to express my joy when experiencing the beauty of light, the power of nature, or the grandeur of geological structures. As a child, I lived in an area with a dramatic climate and was delighted by the strong wind. I loved it pushing against my face, flapping my clothes, and the sound of it ripping through the air. To capture the dynamic power of the wind, I make rapid, energetic strokes with my brush or arrange shapes so they appear to be drifting or falling. Growing up, I was surrounded by landscapes created by shifting tectonic plates and water. I played in shale beds made of fragile layers of rocks. Recording history: these rocks are inscribed by water’s movement and contain fossils I collected in a jar. Like shale, layers of paint document the history of a painting’s creation. I use the lower layers to influence the color of the top layers. Sometimes, I leave areas of the bottom layer untouched to show how the painting began, or I scrape through the paint to reveal what is below the surface. While I paint, I feel connected to the spirit, the force that creates order in the world. The spirit shows itself through geometric patterns in nature, builds and destroys to form monumental landscapes, and guides us.

Featured Work

Photos

This painting of colorful rocks and layers of shale is based on a photograph of Estonian black shale by the geologist, Siim Sepp.
A colorful abstract painting featuring variations of blue and yellow based on a portion of a rock at the 18-Mile Creek Park in Hamburg, NY.
A monumental abstract oil painting of a facetted blue-grey rock with areas of orange. The work is based on a rock found at 18-Mile Creek Park in Hamburg, NY.
This abstract oil painting, "Kinetic Shale," focuses on three images of rocks arranged on the canvas so they appear to fly. The artist uses multiple layers of paint, using subtle variations of blue, green, orange, and white to capture the translucent nature of the stones. The work is based on rocks at the bank of the 18-Mile Creek, running through Chestnut Ridge Park, located in the town of Orchard Park, NY.
This abstract oil painting depicts rocks, which are inscribed with patterns left by fossilized plants. It features jagged blue-grey rocks with areas of orange and dark intersecting lines. It is based on a photo from the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Geology and Planetary Science.