ELLEN MCFADDEN
New & Unseen

November 21 to December 27, 2020

Ampersand is pleased to present an exhibition of new and previously unseen paintings by Ellen McFadden. Among the featured pieces is Wimahl, a painting that I’ve overlooked in the past six years since first collaborating with Ellen and Jason Sturgill on an exhibition of her work in back 2014. Wimahl is a large painting, precise in line and subtle in color, with an illusion of symmetry that is exact and somehow calming. On a recent rainy day while visiting her home studio, Ellen avoided saying anything specific about her paintings, which is not uncommon. But, when asked about Wimahl, she did say, “I always see the river.” Here she speaks of the Columbia, Wimahl being the Chinook word that loosely means Big River, hence referring to the immense body of water these natives called home long before westerners settled in this region. But the painting also alludes to her own long history living under the influence of this waterway. Ellen was born in 1928 into a family of pioneers who worked up and down the Columbia in the salmon trade. The course of her own life has not drifted far beyond its water. When she speaks of the past, it often leads back to her visions of the river. The river as a metaphor; it’s hard not to see it that way. But even though an afternoon spent with Ellen is filled with lively stories, she insists that the paintings are not a narrative—they do not serve as illustration or documentation. This underscores the unusual dichotomy and strange power of her specific form of abstraction. The paintings are completely concrete in their lack of visual backstory, yet even though the forms themselves reveal nothing about a specific moment or thing, the essence of how Ellen has lived and what she has seen is somehow conveyed in each line. The titles of her paintings act as guideposts, suggestively pointing in the direction of understanding. Her newer works are called Chet’-Woot, Wenaha and Ochoco. In conversation about them she spoke of the Yacolt burn back in 1902, of small river tributaries, of how water in the Northwest is now further exploited to cool immense data centers in Prineville, Oregon. We spoke of wood stoves and splitting kindling, of the blueberry bushes out back and the new fence to keep the rabbits out, of the little birds twittering near the front window that lets sunlight in at her easel. I asked about a new painting sitting there—what it was titled. “Oh, that one,” she said. “It’s called COVID-19.”

Ellen McFadden was born in 1928 in Portland, Oregon. She attended the Portland Art Museum School (now the Pacific Northwest College of Art) in the late 1940s, followed by a lifelong commitment to art and design, both as an instructor and freelance graphic designer in the Northwest and Iowa. Influenced in the early 1960s by Constructivist and New Graphic Design movements in Europe, she and her husband, Irwin McFadden, assimilated these new styles into their own design and art practices. Today she continues to work on paintings that incorporate pattern and vibrant color, their titles alluding to the Northwest geography and native tribes that are so ingrained in her personal history. In addition to multiple exhibitions here at Ampersand, McFadden’s paintings have been featured in solo presentations at Weiden+Kennedy (Portland, OR) and she was among 34 artists selected for the Portland Biennial, 2016.

Available Works