Central is privileged to be part of a vibrant art community. Every month, we exhibit the work of a locally grown talent. This month, we’re pleased to feature Ellen Schillace.

Ellen is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and social practice pioneer whose work explores memory, ancestry, embodiment, and collective human experience through layered visual narratives.

First trained as a portrait artist, Ellen eventually developed a distinctive black-and-white, ink-and-brush-work technique rooted in primitive and universal imagery. The work emphasized reduction, silence, and essential form – seeking what is universal rather than descriptive. Over time, she expanded into layered color and abstraction to investigate familial memory, inherited trauma, and intergenerational connection.

Ellen’s recent work has moved further into abstraction. Using layered linear gestures, looping structures, and accumulative mark-making, she investigates the relationships between thought, memory, movement, and embodied experience. The paintings suggest neural pathways, energy fields, cellular structures, and emotional cartographies simultaneously – balancing chaos and order, containment and expansion.

Born in Washington, D.C., Ellen moved to Providence, R.I., when she was four years old. She attended Hope High School and Salve Regina University, graduating with a degree in English and psychology. She currently lives in St. Paul, Minn. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally and held in private collections throughout the United States, Canada, China, and Africa.