profile photo
Contact

Ellen Howell

Connections with people, the natural world, and the past are all important to me and are subjects of my artwork. From an early age my family supplied me with pencils, paper, and time to draw. An elderly cousin once asked to see my hands. She examined them and said, “You have an artist’s hands like your great-grandmother Edith.” Her words have lived in my heart ever since. As a child I was entranced by the shrine-like hush of a pine thicket in the woods, the slipperiness of mud oozing between my toes, the dizzying perspective observed when perching on a tree limb high above the ground. I paint to show gratitude for growing up with nature’s arms around me. I want to paint the beauty of what I experience so that when others feel the awe and wonder that inspired my painting, that mutual feeling will create a connection between us. Finally, painting is a way that I integrate my place, my people, and my past.
WORK