MEDIUM: Painting

STUDIO LOCATION: 6A

WEBSITE: www.ellenrounseville.com

Instagram: @ellenrounseville

Ellen Rounseville narrates stories in oil paint. In her own words: I have always told stories in my paintings. Stories link us together, across our cultures, our pasts, our futures. They are the way I understand the world and how I fit into it. My paintings are my stage. They allow me to express who I am, and yet they allow me to remain partially hidden in the costumes and affect my roles require. 

In addition to my narrative paintings, I have been working on a series of portraits in which I tell stories in a different way. Each subject in the portrait choses a person from history to inhabit and together we and the original image-maker create a new story, but now the stories belong as much to the people I am painting as to me.They are no more my own stories than those I borrow from other times and cultures, and yet they become mine through the painting of them.

I paint in oil, gouache, and acrylic on stretched and unstretched canvas, gesso panels and paper. My paintings range in size from 12 inches square to 6 feet x 8 feet. 

About the Artist… 

Ellen Rounseville is a graduate of the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and studied with Henry Schwartz. A longtime resident of Somerville with a studio at 6 Vernon Street, she has exhibited widely and received grants from the Somerville Arts Council among others.  Her mural-sized painting, Extraction, was exhibited at Brandeis University from April through October and was created in response to the 2023 Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts, “Art in The Year of Climate Action.”