Ellen Weider
Visual Vocabulary
"My images float in a mysterious, ambiguous space. Some suggest houses, buildings, rooms, and other architectural structures. There are no inhabitants, but the structures themselves sometimes evoke human presence and human interactions. Other works employ organic and geometric forms that create a similar effect. Whether my prints, drawings, and paintings are interpreted as pure abstractions or as self-contained narratives, an ironic humor with a meditative bent informs them." ─ Ellen Weider
Ellen Weider is a New York based artist. Her exuberant colors form organic and geometric shapes that interact with each other in narrative compositions that reveal an ironic humor, often with a meditative bent.
© The Portable Museum Project
Weider's images often have a personality in and of themselves. Sometimes they interact in a way that evokes the interactions of human beings. The combination of various colors and shapes in her work can be a metaphor for diversity in our lives. This painting is imbued with optimism, a hope that people can retain their individuality while coming together as a team.
[Ellen Weider. Swim Team. 2019. Gouache and graphite on linen. 16” x 20”] © Ellen Weider
"This painting refers to art and the life of an artist. The composition and the 'sketches,' which can be seen either as the pages of a sketchbook or individual works in a studio or gallery setting, have both the whimsicality and the deliberateness found in my body of work."
[Ellen Weider. Sketchbook. 2019. Gouache, acrylic, and graphite on linen. 16” x 20”] © Ellen Weider
"Houses and buildings are particular to people, and can be a metaphor for them. 'Big Tent'
alludes to a place where all are welcomed and included."
[Ellen Weider. Big Tent. 2019. Gouache and graphite on linen. 16” x 20”] © Ellen Weider
"Joy and celebration are both incapsulated and expanded in this interpretation of an iconic symbol."
[Ellen Weider. Geo-Disco. 2019. Gouache and graphite on linen. 16” x 20”] © Ellen Weider
This antithesis of a bronze sculpture levitates and is barely contained within its allotted space. Circles of color punctuate the surface and go along for the ride.
[Ellen Weider. Bronzer. 2020. Gouache, Acrylic, and graphite on linen. 16” x 20”] © Ellen Weider
The reductive black and white of the images contrasts with an unabashedly playful composition. A sleek and sophisticated interpretation of a trip to Paris is the result.
[Ellen Weider. Seven Days In Paris. 2017.Drypoint print. 30” x 22”] © Ellen Weider
The vermiculate pattern used in architectural elements multiplies and proliferates in this drypoint print. I leave a very thin layer of ink, called “plate tone,” on the printing plate, above which the incised images seem to hover.