Smiling woman with short curly gray hair wearing sunglasses, a pink textured sweater, and a multicolored scarf outdoors with a blurred green background.
An abstract colorful painting with various shapes and lines, framed and displayed on a wall with pinkish floral wallpaper.

Barbara Ellis

Barbara Ellis is a non-objective abstract painter who lives and works in Charlotte, NC. A native of New York City, she has resided in Charlotte since 2004. Barbara earned a B.A. in art at the City University of New York. She began her studio practice in 2012 at Clearwater Artist Studios in Concord, NC at the tail end of her corporate career, focusing on loose figurative and abstraction. In 2017, she attended Steve Aimone’s Master Series Residency. This experience significantly sharpened her understanding of the non-objective art-making process and continues to inform her process today. 

Barbara has exhibited in solo, and group shows in North Carolina, including the Mint Museum, NineEighteenNine Studio Gallery, Elder Gallery of Contemporary Art, and Greenhill Center for NC Art. Her work has been featured in print (Art of the State by Liza Roberts, and the 2021 NC Literary Review). Juried competitions include 2016 ArtPop Charlotte cohort, and Artfields 2017. In 2019 Barbara and mixed media abstract artist Mikel Frank became a team, creating large scale paintings collaboratively. 

In 2024 they exhibited a series of large-scale unstretched canvases at Nine Eighteen Nine Studio Gallery. Barbara has studio space at the Visual and Performing Arts Center (VAPA) in Uptown Charlotte, NC.

www.barbaraellis.art

Abstract artwork featuring colorful, loose line drawings of various objects, including a glass, a bottle, and a cone, on a pink background.
An abstract painting on a canvas featuring broad, expressive brushstrokes in shades of pink, red, purple, green, and black. The artwork creates a dynamic and textured composition with vibrant colors.