Biography: Ellen Soffer is a contemporary abstract painter born in 1957. She creates paintings on canvas and paper, using mainly oils, but also gouache, acrylic, and watercolor. Currently in the studio Soffer is focused on several large mural-sized paintings where color and movement are emphasized. In addiction to twenty solo exhibitions in Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Texas, and Georgia, she has been featured in group exhibitions at the Alexandria Museum of Art, Alexandria, LA and the Longview Museum of Art, Longview, TX. She is the recipient of the Shreveport Regional Arts Council Visual Arts Fellowship and has been awarded several residencies, including the Ragdale Foundation and the Skowhegan School, as well as selected for Studio Visit magazine and invited to lecture at Middle Georgia State College. Soffer earned her MFA fro the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art. She lives and works out of her studio in Shreveport, LA. ---- Statement: My studio and art practice are essential in centering my attention, renewing my energy, and engaging with myself and the formal processes of painting. When beginning a new work, I draw shapes and lines on the canvas while referring to previous explorations that share repeating ideas about color, shape, and mark making. Using oils, I create intuitively, not always knowing how a piece will come together but certain that color and its intensity will be driving factors. Working in paint's nonverbal language, I begin to recognize figurative or associative elements as they emerge from the push and pull of gestural lines and overlapping forms. Content and meaning come afterward by carefully reflecting on how individual paintings relate to current and past bodies of work. Their correlations and narrative are not literal, and the spaces are deliberately ambiguous. My intention is to capture the impressions and sensations left being from dreams, emotions or memories without being limited to the spaced details of the events themselves, leaving room for viewer participation and interpretation.