Ellen Phelan
"Head Study for Fallen Doll", 1993
Watercolor and Gouache
Framed: 21 x 17 x 1 inches (53.3 x 43.2 x 2.5 cm)
Courtesy of Barbara Toll

Photo credit: Daniel Terna

Selected by Barbara Toll

Ellen Phelan (b. 1943, Detroit, Michigan) is a painter and photographer mostly known for her hazy, romantic landscapes. 

Throughout her career, Phelan has worked with multiple media, including oil, watercolor, pastel, gouache, photography, stencil, and collage. In the 1960s, she embraced a violent abstract painting style influenced by postminimalism, for which she stretched, cut, and shredded her canvases into irregular shapes and sizes. Her work took a significant turn in the late 1970s, when she abandoned process art in favor of plein-air painting, resulting in atmospheric, diffuse landscapes. Her visual repertory expanded further in the early 1980s, when she began creating provocative dolls portraits, and again in the 2000s, when she translated her drawings into color. The fluid balance between perception and memory is a recurring theme throughout Phelan's work, despite his broad variety of interests in several genres. Phelan explores loss, memory, and the passing of time, evoking memories that are so deeply ingrained in a common longing that, regardless of the medium used, becomes palpable and noticeable.

Phelan had solo shows at the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Wadsworth Atheneum and has been included in group exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Wien, MoMA PS1, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.