Owl                      Storm Clearing              Autumn Sunset                   Dragonfly

          
   Shape Of The Wind       Red Poppy             Melon Shells                        Cumulus

Ellen Kesten, Pastel Artist – When the moment comes, it is in the act of moving away.

In New Mexico we feel the moving away of time every day, that passion of beauty and grief when high clouds collide with bright light and dark mountains.  Even as we watch, the brilliance changes, fades, leaving us with memory and inexpressible longing.  This shifting of light, color and pattern, is my inspiration.  These paintings are impressionistic and also recognizably here – high desert, New Mexico at its highest, deepest, most powerfully vivid.

As an artist my intent is to paint fluidly, moving quickly to catch that light, that phrase of cloud on desert floor, until the moment is gone.

Juried Shows

• Inpost Artspace, Albuquerque, NM 1999

• South Broadway Cultural Center, Albuquerque, NM 1998

• Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID 1992

• Eugene Public Library, Eugene, OR 1983

• National Museum of Ornamental Metalwork, New Orleans, LA 1981

Galleries

• Cibola Arts Council, Grants, NM 1997-1998

• Blue-Eyed Indian Bookshop, Laguna, NM 1991-1997

• Iron Horse Design, Albuquerque, NM 2000-2003

• Dartmouth Street Gallery, Albuquerque, NM 2004

Public Collections

• New Mexico Arts, Art in Public Places, Santa Fe, NM 1996

• British Museum, London, England 1982

• Archived pen and ink drawings; New Guinea collection

Education

• Fine Arts
  San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA

• Metalsmithing
  University Of Oregon, Eugene, OR

• Painting
  Maude Kerns Art Center, Eugene, OR