ELLEN KAPPES

Ellen has been painting with watercolors for several years, appreciating the satisfying freedom and flexibility this medium gives her for interpreting the beauty around her. For about 25 years until 2007, she specialized in silk-screening, producing a line of notecards and postcards that made their way to many shops, shows and homes. Her framed serigraphs are larger versions of some of those designs.

She enjoys working outdoors, preferring to start a painting on location in order to absorb and get a sense of the feeling and atmosphere of what it is about a place that speaks to her. She says, “In a way, I go into that place while I am there. I am pulled to water views and am passionate about capturing the openness, freshness, and bright colors of the sea, especially when the sun shines on it from behind me. A place becomes a part of me and, afterwards when I return to it I feel a special kinship with it.”

She majored in Art at Smith College and has benefited from numerous workshops, painting classes and one-on-one guidance from other artists. Her work has been exhibited in many galleries and shows in Maine. For the past 38 years, she has lived in Northeast Harbor and Somesville, Maine.