biography

Ellen Orseck paints metaphors through images of figures submerged in water, sumo wrestlers immersed in food, turbulent weather and portraiture. She showed her underwater series “Submerged” at 80 Washington Square East Gallery in New York City.  Her tornados were selected to represent Texas artists at the National Museum in Lima, Peru, as well as in Houston’s City Hall.  She presented a solo exhibit of portraits of creative Texans in Made in Texas at Bering and James Gallery in Houston and her Storms, Sumos and Sweets, presented a view of sumo wrestlers, desserts and tornados at The University of Houston/Downtown O’Kane Gallery. 

Throughout her career, Orseck has earned public arts commissions from state arts councils, corporate collectors and private patrons in Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, the District of Columbia and Maryland. Her largest public commission was a mural awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts in her hometown of Baltimore, Maryland.

She earned her Master’s Degree in Painting from New York University, which included one semester in Venice, Italy, and two in New York City. As an undergraduate, Orseck studied painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and earned a Masters Degree in Museum Education at George Washington University. Her post- graduate education also included four years at the Glassell School of Art. 

Describing her most recent artwork Orseck said, “Whether I am painting fully clothed figures floating underwater or sumo wrestler dolls immersed in chocolate cake, my subjects are characters in a narrative.  At times grave and at times beautiful, the subjects are selected to evoke different responses to life, to illuminate, or to call to mind human emotions.” 

Orseck teaches High School students at St. Agnes Academy and works at her studio at 2101 Winter Street in Houston.
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In the words of the artist:

Whether I am painting fully clothed figures floating underwater or sumo wrestler dolls immersed in chocolate cake, my subjects are characters in a narrative.  At times grave and at times beautiful, the subjects are selected to evoke different responses, to illuminate, or to call to mind overwhelming pressure, danger and death. 

I am fascinated by depicting objects that normally do not belong together or by changing the scale of the elements in an artwork so that some characters in the painting are large and others are small; as if two universes combine.  The incongruity between the unrelated or the unexpected fascinates me because it changes meaning, it’s where surprising relationships form.

A narrative evolves from the relationship between the figure and the background.  Strong foreshortening, sharp cast shadows, reflections, close cropping, repeating patterns, high-contrast colors and a love of drawing dominate my work.  The physical process begins with an idea inspired by a magazine article, film, book, music or an experience. Then I will set up a photo shoot, stage the subject and control the lighting to capture a specific point of view and mood.   Once the digital images are analyzed, charcoal sketches begin. I search for bizarre pairings, metaphors, humor, awareness, pathos and relationships. 

For the finished artwork, I prefer to work on primed and sanded hard surfaces such as Claybord or Masonite.  The picture plane is then covered with a grid, which matches a small-scaled version overlaid on the photograph.  From the working drawings, I create a full-scale value drawing or grisaille made from a mixture of charcoal and acrylic medium.  When the liquid medium mixes with the charcoal it provides transparent glazes of gray.

Over this, I paint an acrylic layer in a Fauvist palette and finally on top of that a layer of oil paint, continually drawing on the surface and into the paint. I often select complementary colors to create more tension.  The underpinning drawing remains an essential way of shaping form.  Although I use different kinds of mark making, drawing is the skeleton in my work.  The intimacy and immediacy of drawing remains a serious part of the painting process where decisions are made and then altered.

For the last decade my life has filtered more directly into my artwork in three distinct but related tracks.  The sumo paintings reference my battle with weight issues.  Storm, hurricane and tornado subjected artworks are inspired by living in Oklahoma, being obsessed with The Wizard of Oz and surviving hurricanes (Katrina, Rita and Ike). I’ve always loved painting people, but when my father died in April of 2009, I began painting images of people underwater – not swimming or playing in the water, but submerged, fully dressed and floating. I will continue to explore the incongruity of beauty and sorrow and the disconnection of distance and death.

Taking The Plunge, monotype, 2010 15 x 20
 

Resume:

solo exhibitions
2010  Submerged
Texas Collaborative Gallery, Houston, Curator:  Dan Allison
2007  Storms, Sumos and Sweets
O’Kane Gallery, University of Houston, Downtown, Curator:  Mark Cervenka
2007  Made in Texas
Bering & James Gallery, Houston, Curator:  Austin James
2004  About Face: Exploring Human Expression
Montgomery College, The Woodlands, Texas, Curator: Robby Wood

group exhibitions
2010  The Big Show, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Curator:  Paul Middendorf 
  Houston Showcase, Deutser Gallery, Curator:  Marilyn Hassid
2009 Submerged, Masters Thesis Show NYU, Washington Square East Galleries, New York City, Curators:  Ruth Newman and Kirby Gookin
Through the Looking Glassell, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Curators:  Joe Havel and Steve Smith
 Teacher Edition, O’Kane Gallery, University of Houston, Downtown, Curator: Mark Cervenka
2008 Texas, Bering & James Gallery, Curator:  Austin James
Art on the Avenue, Winter Street Studios, Houston
The Monotype Exhibition, Museum of Printing History, Houston, Curator:  Patrick Masterson
Cinco, Bering & James Gallery, Blakely and Bevin Bering
2007 Amistad: Texas Artists in Peru, Museo de la Nacion, Lima, Peru, Curator: 
Gus Kopriva
Works in Progress, Universita luav di Venezia, Italy, New York University, Curator:  Maurizio Pellegrin
Texas Artist Invitational, North Harris College, Curator: 
Professor Gary M. Conners
2006  Clean Slate, G Gallery, Curator:  Wayne Gilbert, Houston, Texas
2005  Texas National, Stephen F. Austin State University
Nacogdoches, Texas, Curator:  James Surls 
  Project Storm:  Hurricane Relief Benefit, Project Row Houses
Houston, Curator:  Apama Mackey, Mackey Gallery 
Everybody Art Show Us Your Feminism
University of Houston, Curators:  Terrie Sultan, Michelle Barnes, Lynn Randolph
group exhibitions continued
Back Room, Gallery DIG
Houston, Curator:  Wayne Gilbert 
  Municipal Arts Commission
City Hall, Houston, Curator:  Gus Kopriva

2005  Vistas and Visions
Houston Foundry, Curator:  Lynn Wexler 
The Ten Plagues Invitational
Deutser Gallery, Houston, Texas, Curator:  Jennifer Handy 
2004  Assistance League Celebrates Texas Art 2004
Williams Tower, Houston, Curator:  Jennifer Gross, Yale 
Contemporary Art Museum
  Showcase Houston 2004, Deutser Gallery, 
Houston, Curator:  Miriam Kogan
  Soft Frequency Hardware
  Gallery 101, Houston, Curator:  Wayne Gilbert
2004-07 Art Crawl, Houston
2004-07 Box Show, Mind Puddles Gallery/Bering & James Gallery
  Houston, Curator:  Austin James
2003  Free for All, Steve Martin Gallery
New Orleans, Louisiana, Curator:  Steve Martin
  The Art of Living, ArtScan Gallery, Houston, Curator:  Greg Donner

Humid:  Hot, Sweet and Sticky, Lubbock, Texas 
Curators:  Gus Kopriva and Wayne Gilbert
  Reflections of Hotel Life, Two-Person Show Omni Hotel, Houston
2002  The National Small Oil Painting Exhibition
The Wichita Center for the Arts, Wichita, Kansas, Curator: Edmund P. Pillsbury 
2002-05 15th Annual Dia de los Muertos
(Day of the Dead) Retablos Show, Lawndale Art Center, Houston
  Visual Arts Alliance Exhibition, Allen Center III
Houston, Curator: Clint Willour 
  The Big Show, Lawndale Art Center
Houston, Curator: Annette Di Meo Carlozzi
2001  Soul Journeys, The CG Jung Center
Houston, Curator:  Linda Peyton Huff

corporate & public collections

Congregation Brith Shalom, Houston
Frostburg University
George Washington University
Lyondell Corporation
Montgomery College, Woodlands, Texas
University of Houston, Downtown

awards & projects 

2004-2010 Torah Cover Design Commission
  Congregation Brith Shalom, Bellaire, Texas
1986  Mural Commission, Cupolas, Dallas, Texas
1984  Mitchell A. Wilder Award, Excellence in Publication Design
Dallas Museum of Art Opening Announcement, Dallas, Texas
1981  Mural Commission – Brady Heights Neighborhood
  Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa, Oklahoma
1976  Mural Commissions, George Washington University
  Marvin Center, Madison Hall, Housing Office, Washington, DC

1975  National Endowment for the Arts 
Individual Artist Grant, Mural Project – Public Works, Baltimore, Maryland 
1974  Mural Commissions 
Student Center, Administrative Offices, Frostburg University, Maryland 

bibliography

2008  Profile, Vol. 20 No. 2, Spring 2008, page 22
  Megan Clark. Veritas Magazine, Winter/Spring 2008, page 12
2007  Chris Dunn, 002 Houston, Vol. 9, issue 106, October 2007, Page 18
  Lorenza Smith, Works in Progress, New York University, Masters in Studio Arts, 
Venice Program
  Blog Reviews, Artshound, Glasstire, Spacetaker, b.s. HoustonArtBlog
  Sean Carroll, Houston Press, October 9, 2007
  Amistad, Catalogue, Gus Kopriva, Museo de la Naciom, Lima, Peru, Page 30
2004  Magis Newspaper, March 2004, page 6, Exhibit Notice
2003  Catherine D. Anspon, Art News , Review of exhibit curated, September 2003
Two Artists Look at Hotel Life, Jewish Herald Voice, January 28, page 37
1981  Mom and Mural Made It, Tulsa World, October 2, 1981

artist writings 

2006  “Broken Brushes: German Art from the Kaiser to Hitler,” Catalogue Essay 
2003  “How Modern Art Escaped Hitler,” Guest Curator, Holocaust Museum Houston 
2002  “Auschwitz Eyewitness,” Catalogue, Holocaust Museum Houston
2000  “Clinging to Humanity,” Florida Holocaust Museum, Catalogue Essay

education
2007-09 Masters in Studio Art, New York University, Venice, Italy and New York City
2000-04 Advanced Painting/Printmaking, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
1975-76 Masters of Arts in Teaching, Museum Education, George Washington University, DC
1972-73 Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland
1970 -71  Bachelor of Science, Fine Arts, Frostburg University, Maryland 
1973-74 “                          “ (Created mural painting apprenticeship)

curatorial & writing experience

2003-2005 Curator, Strake Jesuit Art Museum, Houston
1997-2003 Curator, Holocaust Museum Houston
1994-1996  Senior Editor, Southwest Art Magazine, Houston
1988-1992 Feature Writer, Museum and Arts Houston, Texas Star, Jewish Herald-Voice, Art Lies
1982-1985 Director of Outreach, Dallas Museum of Art

teaching experience

2005-2010 High School Art Instructor, St. Agnes Academy, Houston (ongoing)
2003-2009 Private adult students, The Houston Foundry, Winter Street Studios, Houston 
1976-1978 Georgetown Country Day High School, Maryland