LEWISBURG W.Va. (WVDN) – Carnegie Hall’s March/April ArtWalk Exhibits continue with three galleries showcasing the works of regional artists. The Museum Gallery (adjacent to the Hamilton Auditorium) features “Character Studies: Still Life Paintings” by Ellen Fischer.
Ellen was awarded an MFA in painting from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1981 and a BFA in painting and printmaking from Herron School of Art (Indianapolis, Indiana) in 1978. In the summer of 1978, she attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Skowhegan, Maine) on scholarship.
She worked as a curator of fine art in two small museums over a period of twelve years and operated a fine art gallery for contemporary glass artist Harvey Littleton for over ten years. She has been a freelance writer about art and artists for Vero Beach (Florida) Magazine and Vero Beach 32963/Vero News.
As a painter, she portrays the people and landscape of her home in and around Ronceverte, WV. She is also known for her still life paintings, which to Ellen is more than handsome parlor pictures of fruit and flowers. Like her landscape and figural paintings, her still life paintings are part of her ongoing autobiography writ small, of places she has experienced and people she knows. They are objects that have found themselves on the worktable in her studio, gifts from friends, purchases from junk stores, arranged to form a tableau from an unknown story. Her still life objects have lives of their own. This animistic view of tabletop things of metal, wood, clay, glass, and other materials – including the traditional “dead” fruit – is her own, but she suspects it is shared by others, too.
The Carnegie Hall ArtWalk is free and offers visitors the opportunity to explore a wide variety of original works by local and regional artists, all set in a world-class historical venue. The current exhibits are open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. and run through the end of April. For more information, please visit carnegiehallwv.org, call (304) 645-7917, or stop by the Hall at 611 Church Street, Lewisburg, WV.
Carnegie Hall programs are presented with financial assistance through a grant from the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts.
