Ellen Banks (June 7, 1938 – May 18, 2017) was an American painter and multi-media artist who used printed musical scores as inspiration for her paintings.
Biography
Born in
Boston, Banks spent her childhood exploring both painting and music and was inspired by
Piet Mondrian.
Banks received her bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts College of Art, studying also at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She was based in
Brooklyn for much of her career.
Career
Banks began her career in 1962 with her first solo show at Dunbarton Gallery.
Her exhibited work, chiefly still-lifes with some landscape paintings, was then described as "a mixture of the child-like and the post-impressionistic" with design inspired by flora and fauna, especially "woodland themes."
One example of her early style of oil painting is the work
Children's Game, painted around 1962.
Only five years later, in 1967, she received the Prix de Paris.
From 1981, she moved away from oil painting an in her first show and began to use
Sheet music as the visual basis for her work, drawing on European composers such as
Bach as well as finding inspiration in African American music such as the
Ragtime artist
Scott Joplin.
In addition to her formal education at the Massachusetts College of Art, Banks received training from César Domela and Hans Jaffé.
Notable works
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Bovadra, 1975, Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
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Scott Joplin, 1982, Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts
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Maple Leaf Rag. Artist book. Atlanta: Nexus Press, 1989. . .
