Papers, oil, flashe, pencil, MSA gel. Unframed.
This piece is part of a series based on trumpeter Miles Davisʼ lyrical jazz version of “Someday My Prince Will Come”, a familiar song from the popular 1937 Walt Disney movie “Snow White”. (The music was written by Frank Churchill).
Ellen Priest is an American abstract artist who is inspired by music and most notably by jazz. She lives and works near Philadelphia.
Ellen Priestʼs jazz-based abstractions balance directly on the border between painting and sculpture – vibrantly colored spatial illusions when reading from a distance and 3-D relief constructions of layered, collaged paper when seen up close.
Jazz has been her subject matter since 1990. Drawing is always central to her process, as well as standing on its own.
The artist's inspiration comes from surprisingly diverse sources:
• Life-long visual art influences include Cezanneʼs late watercolors, Matisseʼs color and compositional structure, and Abstract Expressionism, especially the paintings of Willem De Kooning and Joan Mitchell.
• The rhythmic and harmonic structures in jazz and related African and Latin American music.
• Her athletic pursuits, since her paintings are really about movement. Priestʼs favorite sports are “balance sports,” where motion depends on weight and balance thrown off-centre, often in response to terrain, like skiing.
