March 9, 2008 

I am Ellyn Weiss. Welcome to my website. I live and work in Washington, DC and in Truro, MA during the summer. I plan to use this page to show my work and also to comment on the art I see in and around this town. That includes the galleries, studios and alternative spaces that sometimes get lost among the art-industrial complex of institutional Washington: the Smithsonian's empire (the National Gallery, the American Art Museum, Portrait Gallery, Freer, Sackler) and those that swim in its wake (the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Corcoran, the Phillips, the Renwick and more).

And now for me:  I have been making art full time for more than ten years. Like most artists, I have been forced to move my studio far more often than I would have liked, but for the past year have found myself in a studio in the thriving little art colony just over the DC border in seedily historical and fortunately affordable Mt. Ranier, MD.

As you will see from the work featured in these pages, I work in a variety of media. I am very fortunate to own an old old old but functional etching press that lives in my spare bedroom in Truro, so I make monoprints during the summer, sometimes collaborating with guests. During the winter, I mostly paint.

This winter I have been painting primarily with encaustic, which is molten beeswax, to which I add oil paint sometimes while it is molten and sometimes as a glaze on top. Each layer of wax and/or pigment is fused to those below with heat. I love the deep, rich surfaces encaustic can achieve, although to an artist accustomed to working in a loose, gestural way, wax is a challenge; it dries almost immediately, making it impossible to achieve a large continuous gesture. Encaustic teaches patience, that's for sure.

I'd love to hear what you think of the work. You can see it in person at the Nevin Kelly Gallery at 1517 U Street NW in Washington, or at my studio. Contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .