Watercolours – Ellen June Wright

I have had the privilege of having many poems published, but I also have a passion for visual art and photography. I studied art and art history at Rutgers College as an undergraduate, and I’ve had a lifelong desire to rekindle that passion.

In addition to my photography, I am in the process of completing a watercolour project that now includes more than 500 abstracts as a process of self-investigation and discovery. Critics usually follow an artist’s development over years if not decades, but as someone coming late to painting, I asked can an artist show growth through volume rather than time?

These watercolours range in sizes from 7”x9” to 22”x30.” I am interested in the power of colour and the rendering of energy through its movement on the page. In addition, I am responding to Stanley Whitney’s grid paintings which are large blocks of colour with bands of solid coloured horizontal lines. His work has occupied my thoughts for many months, but I don’t see a world where everyone is in their own little square. I found that when I began to paint, I was responding to those images but seeing the world from a different perspective.

My paintings are much more a reflection of the world I want to live in where beings freely and harmoniously interact. My paintings reflect a world where colours bounce off or react to other colours, where colours float on top of one another or are translucent.

I am inspired by the works of European impressionists and of Stanley Whitney, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Howardena Pindell, Frank Bowling, Alma Thomas, Kerry James Marshall, Jordan Casteel and others.

Ellen June Wright, an artist, photographer and poet, was born in England but raised in New Jersey. Her art work revolves around the power of colour and the emotions and memories they evoke. She is inspired by the works of Stanley Whitney, Mary Lovelace O’Neal, Howardena Pindell and Frank Bowling. Her watercolours have been published online by Gulf Stream Magazine, Wild Roof Journal, Burningword Literary Journal, Hole In The Head Review, Oyster River Pages and Kitchen Table Quarterly.