Welcome to Ellwood's Coffee!
Artists
Ellwood's Coffee will rotate local art bi-monthly. To have your work considered for a showing please submit a portfolio via email to Cyndi at Cwatkins@ellwoodthompsons.com.
Ed Trask
We are proud to feature local legend Ed Trask for our premiere showing. After growing up in Loudoun County Virginia, Trask left his rural existence, moved to Richmond Virginia and enrolled in the Virginia Commonwealth University's painting program. While in school he spent every waking hour playing music in the mid 80's Richmond punk scene and painting. By his third year in school, after many attempts to get gallery attention, he decided to make the many dilapidated buildings surrounding his school his gallery. Paintings were painted directly on buildings, or done on boards and screwed onto the buildings illegally until the city was covered. In 1992 Ed graduated with a painting degree and moved to Washington D.C. where he started touring with Dischord records band the Holy Rollers, and continued to paint illegal murals all over the world. Three years later he moved back to Richmond to join the band Kepone. While the demand for his paintings started to grow, he figured he should start a gallery and make a go at mural and sign work. Since then the work has never stopped flowing in, and Ed's paintings and murals have been collected into many permanent collections including Gap, Capitol One, Fortune Magazine, NBC, Philip Morris, Media General and Play inc. Ed now plays in the bands AVAIL and Corntooth, continues to have art shows worldwide and has his studio in Richmond Virginia where he lives with his beautiful wife and two children.
Statement
I paint a symbolic portrait of themes dealing with preservation,
spirituality, and a social, moral loss of history in a consumer driven
age. I choose imagery that sparks the imagination: dilapidated
buildings, soon to be developed landscapes, forgotten architectural
gems, and telephone and power lines that connect and abstract. These
themes through their simplicity evoke a sense of familiarity and
inclusion, which brings the viewer comfortably into the canvas and
introduces them to a vibrant conflict. A conflict between composition,
surface, representation, and a battle between an almost graffiti like
graphic flatness with a heavy-handed painterly approach. I use
unnatural perspectives, Architectural line and vibrant surface colors
with rhythmic gestures that illuminate the relationship between man
made structures, and it's chaotic natural background. I believe that
for every architectural man made action, there is a reaction created in
nature that presents this beautiful organic abstraction. Nature versus
Man, Progress versus Preservation; my compositions start simply on
paper but change often on canvas or birch panels. Paint is applied
layer upon layer and is sanded, scraped, and repainted. The history as
to where the painting started and where it has progressed from is
vital. Color, balance, gesture and a brilliant luminosity overshadow
any notions of what should be representational.
Paintings
"Tim's set list"
Singer Tim Barry has been a inspiration and dear friend , He has seen
some real dark times but yet always finds his way out and this painting
is supposed to convey this. He would tape a list of his songs on his
guitar so he could practice them on AVAIL tours.
"Slow dance at the end of the night"
That awkward moment right before you slow dance and then the who cares who's looking part after.
"Eleanor and the bear"
To help potty train my daughter we made up some stories about a big bear named Inglebert,
and a red tail hawk named Johnny. This is Eleanor and Inglebert.
"Pastoria, ruins#5"
Progress vs. Preservation
Nature without man, this is a landscape symbolic of a lost way of life
and a path that leads to no redemption.
Deane Bowers
Deane Bowers is a self-taught artist living in Richmond, Virginia. Her eclectic collection includes works in mixed media collage, found object sculpture, clay and paint. She has sold selected works of art in various retail and gallery locations throughout the South over the past 15 years.
Deane is a genuine artist at heart who enters her studio each and every day because she delights in the challenge of creatively transforming the found objects she collects on her daily walks through Richmond. She sees rich potential in the most street worn things, and the more rusted and broken they are, the happier she is to add them to her collection. It is self-fulfilling to find new and improved uses for the discarded objects. The thrill for her lies in the excitement that every piece of material, scrap of metal and steel has been rescued from the streets and recreated into a recycled form that is a textural delight. This results in living a very green and authentic existence as an artist that encourages her to stay true to her mission.
While there are still limited environments in the retail shops and galleries where she is happy to share her work, she has come to a crossroads professionally and artistically, deciding that her true passion is donating her work for for display in medical settings and health care facilities. Deane herself is strengthened and encouraged in the knowledge that her donated art offers comfort, hope and joy to those whose lives might otherwise be filled with sadness and marked by illness or loss.