Ellen Martin was born on the Museum Mile. Toggling between Manhattan’s Washington Heights and the East Side as a youngster, her backyards were Riverside Drive Park and Central Park. She loved the bones and rocks at The American Museum of Natural History, everything at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the familiarity of the Museum of the City of New York. Later, she adopted the MoMA, the Whitney Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum as her own.
The first pivotal moment in her life happened when Ellen moved to Brooklyn at around ten years old. Everything beloved was suddenly jolted from her.
She painted from 2008 until 2014. Her work evolved from geometric paintings to tonal and textured paintings. After a long pause, she started shooting the “Abandoned” series of decrepit buildings and objects with her iPod touch in 2015. The series started as the result of a short-lived rejection but gradually plummeted into even greater personal depths while simultaneously reflecting on the aftereffects of societal abandonment.
Ellen has been employed as a Marketing Director and an artists’ representative. She is currently an artist, an artists’ advocate, and an independent curator creating exhibits for the Oyster Point Gallery in Red Bank, NJ. In 2013, she started the Jersey Artist Registry, an invitational online gallery, to showcase the visual talent of New Jersey artists.
Education: B.A., Art History, Brooklyn College, CUNY, Brooklyn, NY