Artist Ellen Rice begins series celebrating 50 years of painting
Artist Ellen Rice has begun a challenge to create 50 paintings in 10 weeks and use those paintings to inspire.
Rice’s unique challenge celebrates an anniversary and will be a catalyst for exploration into ideas she’s never painted. The paintings she creates will be the foundation of a greeting card line intended to inspire, encourage and bring smiles.
“When I saw articles this spring marking the 50th anniversary of the Storm of ’62 it hit me that this was also my 50th anniversary of selling my first painting of the Delaware shore,” Rice said. “It also hit me that ideas I’d been putting off for another day had now been put off for decades, and life is short!”
Most of the paintings in the challenge will be small, starting at around 5 inches by 7 inches, she says, but the subjects will be wide-ranging, and she hopes their impact will be large.
“I’m going to have fun with these. I’ve never worked this small before, and there’s something about it that’s very freeing. This challenge enables me to paint a lot of the ideas that have been knocking around in my head for a long time, and it’s the right time for Healing Tree Cards,” she said.
Rice’s desire to inspire, heal and bring joy with her work came early in her life.
Ellen Harris (now Rice) came to Delaware in June 1962 at age 13 to help one of her aunts run a rooming house on Wilmington Avenue in Rehoboth Beach. That summer, she met an artist with remarkable skill who instilled in her the thought that she could do what he did with study and practice.
When she returned to school that fall, she tackled her first oil painting, a palette knife memory of turbulent Rehoboth surf, then another oil of the back bay marshes by moonlight. The marsh painting sold to a fellow student a few days after it was finished, and a fledgling career was born.
Rice became serious about using her work to inspire in the early 1970s after serious physical difficulties forced her to quit her job with the DuPont Company in Seaford. A dedicated seeker of truth and student of the Bible, she relied on prayer for healing when medicine failed.
Her first published work presented itself as an opportunity to illustrate weekly religious messages in a local newspaper, The Leader, in Seaford. From those illustrations grew great personal satisfaction and also multiple painting commissions and award-winning work with the paper as a photographer, writer, editor, designer and corporate liaison.
Entirely self-taught, Rice describes her journey as a professional artist and writer as a walk of faith.
“When I started painting for others and writing, I’d be asked if I could do something, and I’d say ‘Yes, I can do it,’ and then go about learning how, whether it was painting an oil portrait or writing a feature article. All the time I would be knowing it was God … who gave me the ability to do the work.”
Rice has completed the first four of the 50 paintings, and several more are near completion. Each painting will be numbered on the back and inscribed “50 Paintings Celebrating 50 Years of Painting Challenge.”
The paintings will be exhibited in the order they’re created throughout The Ellen Rice Gallery in Ocean View. They’ll also be posted on Rice’s personal and gallery Facebook pages. People can subscribe to receive email notices about them by clicking on the Subscribe button at www.ellenrice.com.
Rice’s inspirational cards will also debut over the summer. Each card will have a quote and/or inspirational story by Rice on the back.
The public can meet Rice this summer on Tuesday and Saturday afternoons from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Ellen Rice Gallery, 103 Atlantic Ave. (Route 26), Ocean View, 2.2 miles west of the Indian totem at Bethany Beach.
The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday. For more information, call 302-539-3405 or go to www.ellenrice.com.
