Ellen is a contemporary abstract painter. She creates paintings on canvas and paper,  using mainly oils, but also gouache, acrylic and watercolor. Her paintings emphasize  color and movement. She is the recipient of the Shreveport Regional Arts Council’s  Visual Arts Fellowship and has been awarded several artist residencies, including  Ragdale Foundation and Skowhegan, as well as selected for Studio Visit Magazine.  Soffer earns her Master’s of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Chicago and her  Bachelor’s of Fine Art from the Philadelphia College of Art. She has exhibited  throughout the Gulf South.  

Her studio and art practice are essential in centering her attention, renewing energy,  and engaging with herself and the formal processes of painting. She explores the  repeating ideas about color, shape and mark-making. The color and its intensity are the  driving factors. Working in paint’s nonverbal language, she begins to recognize  figurative or associative elements as they emerge from the push an pull of gestural  lines an overlapping forms. Content and meaning come afterward by carefully  reflecting on how individual paintings relate to current and past bodies of work. Their  correlations and narrative are not literal, and the spaces are deliberately ambiguous.  Her intention is to capture the impressions and sensations left behind from dreams,  emotions, or memories without being limited to the specific details of the events  themselves, leaving room for viewer participation and interpretation.  

The SAS Gallerie, which is celebrating its one year anniversary was created by  Sanctuary Arts School and is in the family of Sanctuary Glass Studio and Sanctuary Paint  Party Studio. Websites: SASgallerie.com, sanctuaryglassstudio.com,  sanctuaryartsschool.org and sanctuarypaintparty.com.