Editor’s note: Airstream will host a fine art invitational exhibit of landscape art, May 31-June 5. This is one a series of stories that will profile the artists whose work will be shown.
SIDNEY — When Sy Ellens, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, was a child in Cadillac, Michigan, he liked to dig holes in a field.
“My dad would say, ‘Keep on going and you’ll get to China,’” Ellens remembered. One day, he looked up from his hole-digging to see a two-motor airplane flying overhead.
“That was something. When a four-motor came over, that was really something,” he said. “What does the world look like from there?” he wondered. He found out several decades later, when, in the 1970s, he took his first plane ride. What he saw was patterns of fields and streams and yards and buildings. It fascinated him, but to took another 15 years for him to begin to paint from that perspective.
“I tried making photos, but there was not much color there, so I started doing painting,” Ellens said.
He works in watercolor, oil and pastel and the aeiral artworks literally pop with color.
“Painting is dividing up your canvas and putting color in it, making shapes,” he said. “They’re very abstract until I start to put in trees, rivers.” The aerial views have proved popular with collectors.
“I’ve been having so much fun with it, success with it, I’ve kept on,” he added.
Edward and Marci Muller, also of Kalamazoo, have contributed to that success. They have purchased more than 20 Ellens works.
“I just like looking at them,” Edward said. The couple have selected paintings they’ve seen in Ellens’s studio. They also have commissioned him to do specific pieces, including a 4-foot by 18-inch artwork that is hung over their front door.
Part of his appeal to them is that his subject matter is varied. The Mullers own paintings of landscapes, ducks, a harbor full of boats and more.
“A couple look like postage stamps,” Edward said. “Do you know how hard it is to paint a postage stamp?”
Ellens began his career as a commercial artist, but, as he writes on his website, “he soon become disenchanted with designing milk cartons and cookie boxes. With the encouragement of his wife, he enrolled at Western Michigan University to earn a degree for teaching art.
“Following nine years of teaching art at Kalamazoo Christian High, he moved with his family to Nigeria where he taught art for three years at Vandeikya Government Teachers’ College. Subsequently he traveled to many other countries including the Middle East, Turkey, Europe, England, Scotland and, in the summer of 1992, he and his wife spent seven weeks teaching in China, and again in 1997.”
A full-time painter since the 1980s, Ellens submits his work to competitions and often selects a medium to meet contest requirements.
“When you look at my paintings, it’s hard to tell which medium it is,” he said. “I’m more concerned about making good painting color combinations, good patterns,” he said. He works with brushes, using a pencil only if he’s adding buildings to a landscape. Some of his aerial paintings are birds’ eye views. Others look out to the horizon.
“When I work on birds’ eye view, I work on all sections simultaneously, to balance colors and create tension,” Ellens said. For the others, like Grandma Moses, he paints the sky first, then the horizon, and then he keeps working forward.
“I do that quite fast. Usually within the first hour, I have paint on the whole canvas,” he said. Although before he begins, he always has in his mind what a painting will look like, the final product is sometimes quite different from what he had planned.
“Almost always, it doesn’t turn out totally as I envisioned. Other times, it has lots of differnt angles before I’m done. I experiment a lot with different colors and color combinations and how they work together,” he said. “One nice thing, if you don’t like it, you can paint over it,” he laughed.
Ellens works on one painting at a time. His largest was 8 feet by 12 feet. But he also creates artworks that are an inch by an inch and a half, the “postage stamps” Muller mentioned.
“His paintings, both large and miniature, have been accepted and received awards in many national and international juried art shows. Included among many awards and shows are the following: American Watercolor Society High Winds Award, National Watercolor Oklahoma, Western Colorado Watercolor Society, United Pastelists of America International Juried All-Media Show, American Artists Professional League, Inc. at the Salmagundi Club of New York,” his website, www.syellens.com, notes.
Synchronicity Gallery in Glen Arbor, Michigan, represents his work.
Ellens had to think awhile before he could say what one piece of art he’d like to own. He considered works by da Vinci and Rembrandt. But in the end, he said he’d like to have one of Claude Monet’s paintings of waterlilies.
“Because of the colors,” Ellens said, “and I know he couldn’t see very well anymore (when he painted them). I kind of identify with that. One eye is gone and the other eye is starting to go.” He has suffered from slowly progressing macular degeneration for almost 20 years.
He accepted the invitation to exhibit in the Airstream Invitational Fine Art show because its “another place I could get my paintings seen by a different crowd of people,” he said. The art show will be open to the public in the company’s customer service building from May 31 though June 5. Admission will be free.
