Ellen Wertheim

Painting/Abstract/Member A native New Yorker, my transplant to Evanston has been a wonderful adventure. My career in the arts, in textiles and works on paper, has always overlapped with my career in healthcare, most recently as an oncology massage therapist.

Retired now from healthcare and continuing to explore the wonders of nature and the human spirit, I use water-based materials—acrylics, inks, gouache and gel mediums—to create immediacy and emotional vibrancy in my abstract work and to build complex layers, adding graphite, colored pencils and other materials.

A great influence on my work since I returned to school in oncology massage therapy twenty years ago has been Traditional Chinese Medicine in which the seasonal phase of Water–the quiet energy of winter–turns nature’s energy inward, moving deep. When I was still practicing, clients came to me seeking well-being at the most pressing times in their lives, and as their most authentic selves. I remain their grateful student, ever learning from them to be fearless and vulnerable in what I want my work to say.

Much as water’s energy moves downward, germinating and transforming, my focus turns inward in the studio. As essential to my work as it is to the body—and to life itself—water connects me to the natural world and what it means to be human.

Email: ellendwertheim.arts@gmail.com
Website: https://www.ellenwertheim-arts.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellen-wertheim-13245697/