Blue Jewel Tones: The Art Portfolio of Ellen Kappes
Ellen Kappes is an artist who works primarily in watercolour, and has a background in silkscreen prints. The artist’s works often feature bright, deep blue jewel tones and focus on landscapes and seascapes from around her home of Northeast Harbor, Maine.
When creating her watercolour paintings, Ellen often starts a painting en plein air, working from direct observation to capture not only the details and composition of a scene, but the overall mood and atmosphere of that particular moment in time. Even after the works are polished, they retain a nice sense of immediacy, which is helped by the fluid aesthetics of watercolour as a medium.
I really love how bright and vibrant Ellen’s silkscreen works are. The artist takes advantage of the medium, using pared-down colour palettes and flat shapes to build layered landscapes that have a kind of collage-esque aesthetic.
