Visual expression has been a life-long journey for me. As an undergraduate student at Western Maryland College in the 1960's, I learned the value of a liberal arts framework for understanding the common threads of cultural, historical, natural, and aesthetic experience.

In my profession as a watercolorist and mural painter for thirty years, I strive to give visual voice to my love of life and natural beauty. My watercolors are born from responses in my heart to family life, seasonal and human cycles, and political issues of community and global concerns. I have set my paintings on my home turf in the Appalachian mountains, in the Scottish highlands while on sabbatical with my family in 1995-96, and in the rich fabric of the human spirit.

I have exhibited and sold my work extensively in the middle Atlantic states, as well as internationally. I have taught watercolor workshops for many Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia Art Associations, and I have taught my her seventh summer at Common Ground on the Hill Music and Art Week <www.commongroundonthehill.org> at McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College) this past July.
This fall I will be exhibiting in the 24th Annual Virginia Watercolor Society Exhibition I <www.virginiawatercolorsociety.org> in Newport News, VA and at The Prizery Fall Art Show “An Affair of the Arts” <www.prizery@sobova.com> in South Boston, VA. I am also very honored to have my artwork utilized as the cover design for Ira G. Zepp Jr.’s new book entitled, The Journey Outward: Protest & Service in an Uncommitted Generation. ( email: jmuller@mcdaniel.edu)

It is with great joy that I have recently produced new works that focus on my Mom and her struggle with Alzheimer’s, my husband and his continued sense of wonderment at the world, and my sister and her recently liberated perspective on love and life. The focus and solitude afforded by the Lillian E. Smith Center for the Creative Arts in Clayton, GA, <www.lillianesmith.org>, where I spent twelve days in June 2003, made it possible for me to produce these large and complicated works. I hope to have these new works on this site in the near future.

Ellen Elmes
PO Box SVCC
Richlands, VA 24641-1101

email: ellen.elmes@sw.edu
phone: 276.964.7205
fax: 276.964.7720