Featured artist
Ellen Allgaier Fountain
Arizona, USA
- Sell original works
- Sell reproduced works
- Sell reproduced works
Specialty Categories
Painting/Drawing - Landscape
Trails End Wash
Unique Digital Painting on Gallery-Wrapped Canvas, hand-textured 30” x 30 “ image size SOLD |
3 Hours At Feliz Paseos Park
Transparent Watercolor on Paper 12” x 12” image size $385 |
Old Man Cactus No.2
Unique Digital Painting on Gallery-Wrapped Canvas, hand-textured 36” x 20” image size $520 |
Painting/Drawing - Still Life
Southwest Still Life
Giclée print on Paper 16” x 16” image size $175 |
Idiosyncratic Muses (after de Chirico)
Transparent watercolor on paper 21½” x 14” image size $700 |
Life & Death is a Black & White Issue
Transparent Watercolor/Wax resist on paper 40” x 30” image size $1000 |
Painting/Drawing - Wildlife/Birds
Cactus Wren
Transparent Watercolor on Paper 10½” 10½” image size $250 |
Tucked into the Lantana
Transparent Watercolor on Paper 16” x 12” image size $525 |
A Visitor on My Porch
Varnished Transparent Watercolor on Paper 18” x 16” image size SOLD |
Artist Statement
My work is the physical expression of a continual dialog between myself and the world around me. Landscape and still life are my primary genres. I draw inspiration from my surroundings (particularly for landscape work), from historical art styles, and from a few favorite 20th century painters, then filter that inspiration through a lifetime of personal experiences.
My response to my subject matter determines how I will treat it—with flattened space, arbitrary color and lots of patterning, or with the illusion of realistic space and more representational colors. The subject also dictates whether I will use transparent watercolor, acrylic or a mixed media approach, or whether it will become a digital painting or print. How to represent three-dimensional space in two-dimensions is a decision I make with every new work. Sometimes I want to do the realistic illusion thing, and sometimes I want to emphasize it's just paint on a flat piece of paper.
Bio
Ellen Allgaier Fountain works primarily in watercolor, mixed-media and digital painting. She was self-taught until college, where, at the University of Arizona as a graduate student, she took her first watercolor class. She was immediately intrigued by its simplicity (pigment and water) and its difficulties. Unlike oil or acrylic, mistakes can’t be covered up, and she found this both intimidating and challenging. She believes there is nothing more beautiful than a well-done transparent watercolor painting on paper.
Digital painting, which she started doing in the early 1990's, came with a steep learning curve to master the software she uses (Adobe PhotoShop and Corel Painter) to create her digital pieces, but she loves being able to "paint" in layers, as it allows her to experiment with color, pattern and texture as she works, and gives her the freedom to print the work on a variety of substrates. Most of these pieces are one-of-a-kind, and the canvas images are often hand-textured with clear acrylic gel to give them additional texture.
Fountain earned a B.F.A. in studio art, then a M.A. in art education at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she and her husband now live. She taught middle school art for six years after college, then decided it was "now or never" if she wanted to pursue a career as a professional artist. She never looked back.
Painting gives her great pleasure, and she hopes her work connects with the viewer. Towards that end, she paints what she knows and loves, focusting on landscape and still life. She grew up in the wilds of the Idaho panhandle, and as a child made a connection to the natural world that never left her. She uses her travels to expand the range of locations she paints. She likes to work en plein air when possible, but if she can't, she uses her sketchbook and camera to get down the essentials of what excited her about her subject, so that she can recreate that excitement once back in her studio.
My work is the physical expression of a continual dialog between myself and the world around me. Landscape and still life are my primary genres. I draw inspiration from my surroundings (particularly for landscape work), from historical art styles, and from a few favorite 20th century painters, then filter that inspiration through a lifetime of personal experiences.
My response to my subject matter determines how I will treat it—with flattened space, arbitrary color and lots of patterning, or with the illusion of realistic space and more representational colors. The subject also dictates whether I will use transparent watercolor, acrylic or a mixed media approach, or whether it will become a digital painting or print. How to represent three-dimensional space in two-dimensions is a decision I make with every new work. Sometimes I want to do the realistic illusion thing, and sometimes I want to emphasize it's just paint on a flat piece of paper.
Bio
Ellen Allgaier Fountain works primarily in watercolor, mixed-media and digital painting. She was self-taught until college, where, at the University of Arizona as a graduate student, she took her first watercolor class. She was immediately intrigued by its simplicity (pigment and water) and its difficulties. Unlike oil or acrylic, mistakes can’t be covered up, and she found this both intimidating and challenging. She believes there is nothing more beautiful than a well-done transparent watercolor painting on paper.
Digital painting, which she started doing in the early 1990's, came with a steep learning curve to master the software she uses (Adobe PhotoShop and Corel Painter) to create her digital pieces, but she loves being able to "paint" in layers, as it allows her to experiment with color, pattern and texture as she works, and gives her the freedom to print the work on a variety of substrates. Most of these pieces are one-of-a-kind, and the canvas images are often hand-textured with clear acrylic gel to give them additional texture.
Fountain earned a B.F.A. in studio art, then a M.A. in art education at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she and her husband now live. She taught middle school art for six years after college, then decided it was "now or never" if she wanted to pursue a career as a professional artist. She never looked back.
Painting gives her great pleasure, and she hopes her work connects with the viewer. Towards that end, she paints what she knows and loves, focusting on landscape and still life. She grew up in the wilds of the Idaho panhandle, and as a child made a connection to the natural world that never left her. She uses her travels to expand the range of locations she paints. She likes to work en plein air when possible, but if she can't, she uses her sketchbook and camera to get down the essentials of what excited her about her subject, so that she can recreate that excitement once back in her studio.
