PRESS

ELLEN KAIDEN – ARTIST, The Artful Mind — By Nancy Worthington: September 2002

The paintings have graced the walls of Castle Street Café in Great Barrington, Massachusetts since two weeks after 9/11. Done at a very fast clip, nearly all just prior to the tragic events of that day, they almost harkens to what is considered by many a bygone era. With an honest voice about herself, a sense of humor, strong opinions about current events, the desire to instill passion in others, and a sense of blessed luck, This painter takes refuge

in everyday tableaux, tweaking them slightly to appeal to her enchantment with color and form. Taking a look at her, it becomes apparent that this is true of all her work, whether it is of flowers or landscapes, subjects that she rarely does.

Her style is dramatic, representational, and large. Her use of color is delightful and unusual, something not immediately apparent. As one looks at the pieces the underlying hues, the touches of cool colors where you expect warm, the juxtaposition of fine, detailed lines with blurred areas suddenly make the paintings different from what is a first impression. Working in watercolor, there is spontaneity in the lifelike portraits of vegetables, garlic, fruit, picnic baskets, pastry displays, lobsters. It comes from working wet, so there are areas that have bled just slightly, taking what could be a mundane and boring piece and giving it a life of its own, a story, There is also a sense of humor that often comes out in the names of the paintings such as “Garlic Mystique” and racing lobsters called “Some Like It Hot.”

Nancy Worthington: A couple of friends and I go out to dinner once a month or so, and Castle Street is one of our favorite places to go. We were here in early October last year, when we first saw the paintings and were quite taken with them.

Ellen Kaiden: I was excited about it and the process. I was away from them all winter and just to come back and see them…I’m working on another show for Sarasota in November and December, and seeing these makes me feel that I am ready to go on to the next batch.

NW: Have you always painted?

EK: I have always painted, but I was a potter and a sculptor before I was a painter, I went to Philadelphia College of Art and one of my teachers for painting was Will Barnett. He is a master of simplicity and form. But, you know, my father was a painter and a sculptor, my grandfather was a sculptor and a painter. Have I always painted? I took a long hiatus from creativity, it was a different life, a different time, and then I discovered pottery and sculpture. When I came back to painting it was from the focus of form and simplification of form, how one object relates to another object.

Too, my whole life has been working on food issues. I come from a family where everybody says, for instance, when they take a wonderful trip. “Well, where did you go?” and they’ll say “Barcelona,” What did you do?” they say, “No, no, what did you eat?” and they’ll proceed to say “ I ate this, I ate this…” I grew up in a home where the vegetable truck would come and the man would deliver the vegetables and they were always laid artistically on the dish drainer. It was like the woman who washed them was an artist herself just in the way she would lay them on the counter. I think I developed an affinity for the subject matter at maybe five years old.

NW: Its funny you mentioned that, because there is a caterer in town who started out as a painter and got into food because she needed a job. She was saying that she does something similar only she goes in the other direction by bringing in color and form to the food and basically treats it the same way she treated her painting.

EK: I treat my cooking that way, too. I am a cook and I love to arrange plates and I love to make sure that everything looks a certain way. It’s just happy and life-affirming. As my daughter said jokingly (about the painting “Garlic Mystique”), “Ma, you couldn’t get more sex in your paintings, or could you?”

NW: they are exuberant. I often find still lifes stilted, but these are not, they are very colorful and in many ways very abstract.

EK: it started to go Abstract Expressionist near the end. It shows a whole way of working and looseness. Whey you are working on something intensively, your style changes from beginning to end. I really liked what was happening and how I was losing the forms and then finding them again. I like the illusion and looseness. I think that this (“Garlic Mystique”) was the last one.

They started to show my sense of humor and I think for today with politics, the economy, everything that is going on, well, I don’t think when people are purchasing artwork that they’re looking for oppressive things that are heavy ominous. I think that they are looking for things that are affirming or reassuring, that make them feel good, something that they can live with.

I’ve always lived with artwork, but I wouldn’t bring everything home with me. Even though I do mostly restaurant and hotel artwork I paint from the point of view that I would like it to be in someone’s home.

NW: these are all watercolor?

EK: they are all watercolor. I’ve monkeyed around with the idea of printing them on watercolor paper, but I am such a purist. People say “well, don’t you project them?”

NW: you mean like the camera obscura (used by the Hudson River painters amongst others)?

EK: Some people use the overhead projector, take a photograph or a print that they have and then they have their drawing in about ten minutes. To me the drawing is a part of the process to discover my form and my focus and my composition. Until I have a good drawing I won’t even think about starting to paint. I have to understand it, I have to feel it, I have to touch it. It’s the tactile part of me that is left from the sculpture and the clay.

I have a wonderful studio that overlooks a beautiful lake…and I won’t do landscapes! Isn’t that funny? I look at the landscape, I look at the lake, I look at the sunsets and say “Why would I mess with it?” I like that it is an ever-changing painting. I pick things to paint that I can touch, eat, smell. That’s important to me.

It takes me a long time to think out subject matter. I do a tremendous amount of photography. I had a teacher who said to me that “You are the artist and you can see what you want in the photograph. If you see something that you want in a different place, change it to make it what you want. But it has to be your photography.”

I go through rolls of film until I see just the right thing. A lot of the photographs (for these paintings) were taken at “Sineralla” in New York, it’s a place like “Whole Foods” in San Francisco. You have to ask the manager because a lot of the displays are copyrighted. Anyway, between Napa, the Hamptons, Guido’s…I mean Guido’s has played an important part in my influences. They are always happy to help and I have been most appreciative of them

NW: I’d like you to pick a painting and talk to me about the process of it. Because there are a lot of hues in the paintings, that I think many people would not see (in the real thing).

EK: that is one of the things that I like most about my paintings. I’ve always been involved in color. There were a lot of conversations in my house about color. We manufactured ladies’ cosmetic accessories and we would manufacture our own fabric to make the bags out of. We would all get involved, this from a very early age, in picking color palettes for certain prints.

When I came into painting my focus was in color in a very unorthodox way. Nothing is straight out of the tube. Everything is mixed. I’m not afraid of color. I believe in “in your face” color. I don’t work it out ahead of time. It’s something I discover. I am very hung up about lights and darks, contrasts. The paintings are chock full of (tonal) value and I think that is what makes them jump off the paper.

I love subtlety and the discovery of how colors work with other colors.

NW: since you did these paintings for this space, where did you start and where did you finish?

EK: I think I started with the radishes. Red looks particularly good in this space, and when I showed Michael Ballin, chef proprietor of Castle Streets Café, my photographs ahead of time, one that he was attracted to was a radish painting (that was Guido’s). I accepted his input, I had my reference photographs and I had subject matters that I wanted to paint. I like this bold zeroing in perspective, but I also like a whimsical figurative perspective, so I had these two themes going on at the same time.

I started with the radishes and the “Big Apple.” in retrospect it looks like all of the apples are falling down on top of each other. I finished with “Garlic Mystique.”

What I do is wet on wet, then I find my shapes. I work a section at a time. I work with shape, I do my lights first, I know that I have only one chance to have a really fresh feeling. Watercolor is an unforgiving medium. There are people who enjoy controlling things and there are people who enjoy every painting that I do. (Sometimes it’s with) color, sometimes something will happen and change the whole direction of the painting. Sometimes you find what you are working on in the middle of a painting. You just have to go with the program and make it work.

Every painting is an opportunity for self-exploration and these are fun.