A bit about Ellen: Each human being has a story. Each visual artist is telling a different story about a private perspective of the world made public through image – form, color, concept. I am the fruit of my history and the explorer of the present and future. With insight and compassion my history becomes the knowledge I use to imagine my art and the contribution I can make to the world through it.

On a linear, ordinary level my life has been a labyrinth of experiences which seemed to distract me from being a visual artist at all. In fact, those experiences allowed me to understand the world and myself deeply enough to be able to create on canvas my vision of this life on earth.

I graduated from Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL in 1973 with a degree in art unaware of the long journey ahead. In 1977 I learned to make tapestries on a small hand loom and bought a large tapestry loom (6’ x 6’) the same year. From then until 1999 I made large tapestries. I participated in art shows, winning one “Best of Show” and some honorable mentions. I was the area director of Florida Craftsman, a large fine crafts organization, for Northwest Florida for a year in the 1980s. I had solo shows in Tallahassee, Florida. I say all this to explain that I understand the necessity of participating in the political process of art, and that all this happened while I was involved in my personal life of relationships and work.

In 1999 I decided to switch mediums because I felt that tapestry weaving was no longer the direction I wanted to go in. I went through a period of pen and ink drawings with one solo show in Tallahassee, FL in 2002 at a small gallery called Nomads. In January of 2003 I felt a strong desire to paint though I had never felt like painting before. The feeling became so overwhelming that I finally got all the materials together and started painting. It was the most satisfying creative activity I had ever done. It was simply my time to paint.

When my daughter left home to be on her own in 2004 I moved too and went to Atlanta, GA, the largest city close to where I had spent most of my adult life. It was a very lonely time for me, but I got serious about painting and being an artist and met a couple of experienced artists there who helped me become more focused and professional. After several months and some additional moving around, I ended up moving to Los Angeles with my daughter and her boyfriend in January 2006. I learned a lot more about painting in Los Angeles before packing up again to move to Sacramento in late 2007.

In 2008 I completed a series of paintings, “The Future Is You,” concerning the environment and climate change. I am now focused on selling my work and tshirts featuring many of my paintings on my site at ellensgreenart.etsy.com in addition to entering shows and continuing to paint new canvases with an emphasis on exploring different ways of expression from portraits to mystical to landscape.

For more information about me and more paintings you can view my website ellenmcmahill.com and/or a slide show of all my paintings at MySpace.