(RE)NEW

(F)LIGHT

 Karen Z. Ellis

Contact: karenzellis@gmail.com

Beauty, strength, and hope characterize this new exhibit of early and recent artwork by Karen Z. Ellis. Always enchanted by the cycles and rhythms of the natural world, her work also explores the realm of myths, dreams, and legends side-by-side with the simple beauty of natural forms. For example, the legend of the Phoenix/Firebird evokes the concept of beauty from ashes.

Works in the exhibit include original hand-pulled intaglio prints, monotypes, drawings, water-media paintings, and mixed-media collages. There is also a slide show of Karen’s photographs reflecting the adaptability of Nature after wildland forest fires.

Artist Statement:

An ongoing fascination with the nation of trees – including their trunks, branches, limbs, twigs, roots, seeds, bark and leaves – continues to have a hold on me. Their poetry delivers metaphors of growth, longing, choices, strength, flexibility, gratitude, patience, and more. As I learn of their shapes and forms, they shape and form me. As I observe their growth, I experience personal growth. As they patiently reach, I also reach. As they are lost to forest fires, and eventually regenerate, I learn resilience. They teach me so much, including that what we do to our environment, we do to ourselves.

This exhibit of early and recent work is my way of reflecting and sharing Nature’s beauty, strength, and hope, as if in shards of a broken mirror.