Interview with Ellen E. Rand

Christine Hughes
April 2016

I have known Ellen for several years. It took me only a half hour to fall in love with her. She is a deeply cultured, intelligent, warm, humorous and candid person. I wanted to do this interview a year ago, but Ellen was ill and I never got to ask her. Now with the advent of her show at Randall Harris’ Figureworks Gallery, and Ellen having gotten through all her medical stuff, the timing seemed perfect. Aside from being a wonderful painter, Ellen runs her own gallery Art 101 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She comes from an intriguing family of women painters and has published a book centered on the life and work of her grandmother and family called “Dear Females.”

Let’s start by discussing the paintings in your show here at Figureworks.

This was a painting I did quite a while ago, (Ellen pulls out a small, orangish painting) and I put it in Randall’s self portrait show. See this shape: everything in this show is taken from this shape. 

The shape is obviously the female figure.

Actually all my life I have been working with female torsos, the shape is almost abstract.

How did you begin working with that form?

From drawing the model I guess, then starting to paint. I’m not intellectual.  It all just comes along.

You are intuitive?

I guess so. These two paintings in the first room were done before I got my diagnosis and my operation. So, then I got the diagnosis in April, which was pretty severe. Had the operation in May, couldn’t work for a while. In June I met with the oncologist and he told me that this disease can come back in a year or two and kill you. I came home and thought well, I’m dead. That inspired me to schedule the gallery for the next year and to start to paint again.

That is so totally you.

I had some paintings started and I continued those and started some new ones. Something in me made me go and buy some wood, have it cut into strips, and put the strips in the middle of the panels thus separating them. I looked at the first one I did a couple of weeks later and I thought, “Oh, I did that because I was cut up and put back together.” I had these two which I was working on. I decided to keep them separate,  and horizontal. You see it’s still the same shapes, they are landscapes now.

You play with the form’s composition within the panels and also from panel to panel.

I don’t know what I do. When people ask me what I do or what’s going on, I can’t answer. Years ago, when I was at the Met, I saw a Manet painting of a sailor in a boat with one or two women. I like to read some of the information about a painting – when, where, who the artist knew, but the card next to the painting said that the artist painted out the original placement of the rope and put it in a different place because the “dynamics of the diagonals of the expressions of… and on and on. I thought, no! He painted it out because he didn’t like the way it looked! I do feel that an awful lot of art now is just an illustration of a thought or an idea, not something that comes from inside.

Here’s the other thing that happened in this show. This one, being a dark one and (numbers) 9 and 11 were the last three I was doing. I had a lot of trouble with them, kept working on them, not getting them quite right. The people who bought this called me up and said, “We are naming that painting, we are calling it Phoenix. It’s you coming out of radiation.” Then I realized that I painted these 3 dark ones while I was being burned every day, I didn’t know it, but that’s what was going on.

You finished the radiation how soon before the show opened?

About a week.

Ellen, will you talk a bit about your process of painting. These peices have a sort of encaustic like surface.

They are wooden panels, I don’t like canvas. I apply a rough coat of gesso so there is a little texture. I usually do the drawing in a few layers of thin acrylic. Then I start using oil sticks. There are many many layers of paint put on and often rubbed off. On and off, on and off. That’s what makes the light. An important part of painting is light — the way that the light comes to me, and then into the painting and reflected back to me. I am deeply indebted to Larry Webb, a wonderful painter and friend. He put the panels together for me, something I was unable to do.

You had another show here a few years back,  your paintings coupled with your grandmother’s paintings and drawings.

I’m named after my grandmother.  She was in Paris from 1896 till 1899. She was a private student of William MacMonnies. I found a box of letters to and from her and her family and friends during her years in Paris. Much of the material was ruined, but I saved what I could. My grandmother was one of five women artists, sisters and cousins on my fathers side of the family, the Emmets. My grandmother’s talent was evident from the time she was a child. She did these when she was 11.

She did these for her younger sister. She called herself Bay. She didn’t like Ellen or Gertrude, her given names. She studied with William Merritt Chase at the Art Students League, but she left and opened her own studio. Chase had a school in Shinnecock, Long Island, and all of the Emmets were involved there except Leslie, who was too young. At the end of the first year, this man saw Bay’s drawings and hired her to do illustrations for Harper’s Weekly, which he had just started.  At the end of her first year, Harry MacVicker, who had just started Vogue, hired her to do illustrations. She was sixteen years old! She was ashamed of the illustrations, not because they weren’t good, but because they were commercial. At any rate, she kept doing them and eventually made enough money to get herself and her sister Rosina to Paris. From then on Bay made the lion’s share of the money in the family. Her mother was hopeless.

Did you grow up knowing these women?

No, only my great aunt Leslie, her sister. I finally got through the letters after a few years. They were written on very thin paper on both sides, then round and round. Through the letters I got to know my grandmother. She was a wonderful woman. After they got to Paris, there was a stream of women artists, cousins and friends, coming to stay and study. When they needed money Bay would go to London and do a commission. She hated the British, thought they were all philistines. Her letters are very funny. She would write back “Dear Females,” thinking what they must be doing without her. She supported everybody on her portraits, and she did wonderful paintings of her family. Later she got married and had three boys, and she had to support everyone. She just had to churn out the paintings.

It sounds as though she was supporting almost a dozen people.

Yes. She was a wonderful woman, I wish I had known her, but I got to know her thru the letters. There are things you try to figure out, but you can’t… did she have an affair with MacMonnies, did she come close? Yes.  When she died, a cousin wrote to Lydia, “Bay’s death is a great tragedy for many people — and a world loss, like an oak tree cut down that sheltered many creatures. She was so strong over many weaknesses which made (her) lovable and distinctive and attractive. I was made to study music. I don’t know why.

You don’t know why? Did you love music?  Did your parents love music?

My mother wanted me to do it, and I did it well enough. I played piano.

So where did you grow up, Ellen?

Salisbury, Connecticut on a little farm. My grandparents had a big farm, my father’s parents.

How did it feel to have your work with her work in the same space?

Randall was the one who thought of having my grandmother and picked out the work.

Randall Harris (joining the conversation): It was an amazing combination. Ellen’s work at that point was really abstract collage work, which had been readdressed over existing paintings. Bay’s work was drawings and some paintings, a real mix of works, some finished, some sketches. When I laid it out in here, they just worked so well off each other. You would have some representational pieces next to more abstract works, but the colors and the shapes worked off each other beautifully.

How did you and Randall meet?

With galleries. I’m in my 12th year.  Randall’s been here longer, 16 years. I had the gallery for a while and was showing good work, but no one seemed too interested, so I had a brilliant idea one night. I thought why not have a show of some of these gallery directors who are artists. I didn’t know if anyone would be interested. I went and asked Richard Timperio, whom I didn’t know very well, but I thought, if he says yes, then everyone will say yes. He did. Then I asked Randall, then Daniel Aycock, Kate Vance, Todd Rosenbaum and Alun Williams.

What made you decide to have a gallery?

I woke up one day and said I’m going to have a gallery and call it Art 101. I had left my marriage, which was pretty disastrous, and moved into the first floor. As soon as I finished fixing it up to live in, I decided to have a gallery. I moved into the back, put the gallery in the front. The first year I just sort of flew through it, and the second year I began to realize I didn’t know what I was doing.

How did you start painting?

That’s a real story. I was getting my masters degree in early childhood education at Bank Street. I think, because I’d written a children’s book, I got started with that path. It was the era of EST. One of my classes was a child psychology class. Out of that arose another group which met once a week. We would meet with the teacher to do sort of touchy-feelie stuff. I was very, very shy and had real trouble talking to people. This is a magic story. I had this little apartment on East 96th street. One night towards the end of this class, the guy said, Ok Ellen, you finish and close the class for the night. I couldn’t speak. I was paralyzed with fear. I didn’t speak or look at anybody. It seemed to go on forever. Finially I said something, and I came home. It was after midnight. I sat down and said, how am I ever, ever going to learn to express myself! I looked down at the floor, and believe it or not, there was a sketch pad, brushes and some paint. I don’t know how it got there. I picked up the paper, brushes and acrylic paint, and I started to paint two images that had been in my head. I swear to God I heard a click. The piece of the puzzle falling into place.

That’s a great story! Do you remember what those two images were?

Yes, I still have them. One was a dream, and the other an image that came into my head while driving at night. Then I just shut myself up. I didn’t go to any museums, didn’t look at any art. I just painted. I grew from little watery acrylics to bigger ones, moved to canvas. I quit Bank Street. I got a job teaching art at Marymount school. I just painted and painted, went through so many stages. I got my loft (before it was TriBeCa), where I could paint huge paintings, big nudes. I painted from my drawings. When I lived on the Upper West Side, there was group of women who hired a model. I figured I’d better get going. I learned a lot that way. When I moved downtown, a friend invited me to join his figure-drawing group of fairly well-known, older South American artists. I was terrified, but I went. I used a very hard pencil (laughter), so no one could see my drawing. One day he asked to see my drawing, I said yes, and he said, “Well, where is it??”… (laughter)

You might as well have been working in silverpoint!  You’ve come a long way from being that shy.

The minute I started to paint I felt as though a door opened into me. I could talk. I could come out in my paintings.

Did your parents support this change?

My mother thought I should design sheets and greeting cards. That generation didn’t get these women. I suppose it was the combination of growing up with the depression and the war. I don’t think they had time, they didn’t think about art. My father did more than anyone because at least he built that building to save some of his mother’s paintings.

I guess the art making skipped a generation. Did you grow up going to museums?

No, but I grew up with these paintings in the house. I have never taken an art class.

When did you start doing two panels and putting them together?

I don’t know. I have an old painting of a landscape. Then I have an old painting of a model cut in half. I don’t know.  It just seemed more interesting.

I remember being in your studio a year ago and you had two panels which you were working on. You said you were going to put them together like this, and then just by accident you had them up like this. Look at the difference. Do you have in your mind how the panels will be together, or do you always use that element of change to play with them as you’re working? It’s an interesting way to break the painting back open again.

I’m working with the same shapes, seeing what they can do, what they make me think about. I love the idea that I have been fascinated with this shape all my painting life.

I have so enjoyed sitting here with this work.

Randall: I had this whole front room planned out and liked the quiet energy, and then Ellen came in with the darker pieces and asked me what I thought of them. I said, “not much.”

You were that candid about it?

Randall:  Yes. I didn’t dismiss them. I said we will bring them down and see. I had a vision of how it would feel based on her other work. Once the new paintings were here, I knew it was a terrific addition. You start, in the first room and then it grows into a different body of work.

I found it interesting that people were very specific about which painting they wanted to buy. Most times people go around trying to figure out which work to buy. Here people had an immediate response.

Ellen, you have sold a lot of work, but even beyond that, you must be very pleased with the show.

I am dazzled. You know, people have been saying to me, “I never knew!” I have been doing shows for others. It never occurred to me to do it for myself.

Randall:  Well, it occurred to me to do it. And I will say I didn’t give her any breaks. We had a deadline.

It was good to have the summer with no gallery. That’s when I got a lot of this work done. I’m also really proud of the fact that, through all of this, my gallery was never closed, even for a day. That is in large part thanks to Nicola Ginzel, an artist and friend who also shows at ART 101.

Randall: Funny, during the drawing sessions which we host on Saturdays, we get many artists here. Ellen’s work will surface in the drawings people are doing. I saw it the other day. The model took a pose that was reflective of the form on this painting.

Ellen E. Rand
March 4 – April 24
Figureworks Gallery
168 North 6th Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Saturday and Sunday 1-6
and by appointment

http://www.figureworks.com