About the Artist
By Doreen St. Felix New Yorker Magazine September 2023 9/11/2023
PICK THREE
The staff writer Doreen St. Félix shares her current obsessions.
3. A long night: Ellen Bradshaw makes oil paintings of the city’s transient elements—bridges, crosswalks, store façades. In her paintings, the city seems suspended in a time when it was less corporatized, when it was more hospitable to the hungers of nighttime flâneurs. Check out her scenes, on view in a solo show called “Manhattan: Dusk to Dawn,” at the Pleiades gallery, in Chelsea, through Sept. 30.
Wonderful to hear from you! Very observant!
It is my husband Joe, a lifelong New Yorker, and it has become a trademark! It started during the pandemic when I was painting from home, and had one constant companion!! Now everyone in the neighborhood who knows Joe looks for him in the paintings! “Where’s Waldo?”
Thanks so much for reaching out!
XO!Ellen www.ellenbradshaw.com
On Aug 10, 2023, at 12:41 PM, wrote:
Hello Ellen,I hope this email finds you well. I also hope you remember me, I purchased 3 of your paintings of my old neighborhood in the West Village (which I and my wife treasure). I was looking through your paintings today via one of your emails, and I am compelled to ask you this. I noticed it before, but was shy about asking. In many of your paintings (including one of the ones I purchased) there is a figure of a man in blue shorts, sneakers (sometimes with red socks) a light blue shirt, gray hair & sunglasses. Is that your husband, or a friend or relative? I’ve gotten to where I look at your paintings now looking for this person! I think it’s great; like a trademark.Warm regards,Lou Antoniazzi
MY OLD STOMPING GROUNDS!!! I was aimlessly scrolling down on Facebook when this painting suddenly popped in front of my eyes. Instantly I felt a rush of nostalgia because during the 1960s and 1970s I lived in an apartment a block and a half to the left of Village Cigars, there on Christopher Street. The painting is called NOCTURNE, VILLAGE CIGARS by the very talented Ellen Bradshaw whom I never met and don't know. She really captured the nighttime atmosphere of this Greenwich Village neighborhood, my stomping ground during my younger days I was out all hours of the day and night searching for pleasure and the meaning of life. Many times I passed Village Cigars on my way home from other parts of the Village. I climbed those subway stairs hundreds of times on my way home from uptown. I worked as a press agent in the Times Square area when I lived in that apartment. I completed my first novel in that apartment. I started writing action/adventure pulp fiction novels in that apartment. I fell in love a few times while living in that apartment. My second wife and I lived in that apartment during our ridiculous marriage that lasted around four months. My daughter Debbie from my first marriage flew up from Miami to live with me during summers when she was a little girl. I took summers off from writing novels and we prowled the city together, had many adventures, and returned every night to that Christopher Street pad. The protagonist of my semi-autobiographical novel THE LAST BUFFOON lived in that funky pad, which I described in gory detail on pages of that novel. It was a dump but it was home. How I miss my Greenwich Village years and all the friends that I had, most of whom no longer are alive. I smoked tobacco cigarettes in those days. My brand of choice was the strong unfiltered French cigarettes called Gauloises, with their distinctive earthy fragrance reminiscent of horse manure. I bought a pack every day at Village Cigars, and felt very sophisticated and worldly when smoking them. I stopped smoking tobacco cigarettes in 1986, following parathyroid surgery. Where are my intense Village conversations of yesteryear? I regret that they are gone, never to return. They enlivened my younger days when life was exciting as opposed to now when I no longer live in NYC, and have become a half-baked old philosopher who goes to bed at 9pm. No one ever invites me to parties anymore, which is just as well because I usually fall asleep around 9pm. Village Cigars is a Greenwich Village landmark and is still there as far as I know. The cheese wagon was not there when I lived in NYC. I think it was a newsstand then.
Here's my New York born fellow-artist review of your work, Ellen:
"Ashcan School & Film Noir, Edward Hopper & John Sloan, none of these fully describe Ellen Bradshaw's work and yet the best of what those names suggests, and more, can be found in this exceptional artist's New York cityscapes.
In her daylight paintings one finds the beauty of commonplace New York settings not through the use of obvious devices but by perfectly chosen subject views, well selected detail and masterful simplifications that skillfully directs the viewer first to the painting's center of interest (always a celebration of a scene otherwise easily overlooked), and then through peripheral passages that support her stagecraft and its intent: To induce that exquisite moment when even Manhattanites will slow their gait and think, 'Shit that's beautiful --and I don't even know why!'.
Her nighttime paintings feature more than the dramatic lighting such scenes can provide, they show, with a minimum of allegory, the spirit of the city's architecture and streets as they suggest, by absence, the vast humanity of the crowds, commuters and passengers that create the very spirit of New York, and the signposts and pushcarts and other working class artifacts at rest, in the kind of nocturnal fugue only terribly overused inanimate objects can enjoy between big city days. In short, she provides that night visit to those off-path places about which people wonder why they'd like to visit and never do.
How does she do it? Three distinctly discernable tools of her magic can be identified and all three represent paradoxical balances: Her brushstrokes are definitive, confident and emphatic while at the same time spontaneous in appearance, often light and quick shorthand and sometimes bold, sweeping and encompassing; her color use is always balanced, always well coordinated throughout the work. She uses the contrasts of rich hues (what art nerds call complimentary biases) strong enough to reward the eye and yet tender enough to honor the precise daylight of the moment. In fact she features the colors of the afternoon, the late afternoon or whatever moment she chooses with pinpoint (and poetic) accuracy --few accomplishments are greater than that, many painters will tell you. The third 'paradox', not apparent to the untrained eye, is Ellen Bradshaw's design sense. In a nutshell, her image framing, perfect layout and manipulation of design dynamics are those of a highly developed expert with a discriminating editorship of design elements --and yet-- she never allows a representational element to hinder the overall trance of the work and never lets the trance of the work obscure the viewer's visit of the city's reality.
What separates good artists from exceptionally gifted artists is that a good artist chooses ways to create works of aesthetic value; a great artist chooses opposing and difficult to balance forces and techniques and somehow puts them in balance to achieve exceedingly rare value.
Any New Yorker who doesn't appreciate Ellen Bradshaw's work is probably actually from Kalafuckinmazoo [Sorry, I couldn't suppress the Bronx in me] and any investor who doesn't buy her paintings is off his or her Kala-something rocker."
--Joe Madden
"Ellen Bradshaw for me..you have the best eye i have ever seen of what TRUE New York is... somewhat casual..maybe even inconsequential..But definitely dynamic showcasing to what a passerby might see in passing..A lot of times NYC is showcased too formally in my opinion..This is what I would show to someone who has never been here..to describe our City..I am by no means an art connoissuer..But I am a lifelong New Yorker..born and raised..All i can say is..Stunning..Bravo.."
--Frank Robert Cuadrado Jr.
" Hip, hip Hurrah, I simply love all of Bradshaw's paintings, in that in my opinion, the artist has that rare talent of making us feel a part of the painting. Hopper and Sloan are outstanding artist, but, to me, in admiring one of their works, I am really doing that, admiring. With a Bradshaw, to me it's like being captured by the painting, In her painting "Ye Waverly Inn" , you have become part of the painting, you are looking at the scene as you would look at it in real life, there is just enough detail to engross us, you want to look up and down the cross street to make sure no cars are coming, In my opinion she has made us part of the painting, not only this one, nearly every other one."
" You indeed Ms Bradshaw ARE the third side of the Sloan, Hopper, BRADSHAW, triangle ! thought no one could equal them, but I was wrong, I am witnessing someone who, in my opinion has surpassed them !!! I kid you not, it is not flattery, but an honest opinion."
--Arn Castor
"I am now receiving messages from my computer backup service. The messages are becoming more and more urgent: 'You are about to run out of storage space on your computer. Remove at least 50 Ellen Bradshaw images immediately.' What a quandary you have put me in: the beauty of art and the crass exigencies and practicalities of life. It's the same old story, over and over again..."
--Jeffrey Ingber
"Your paintings strike a chord in my heart that lasts all day. When I get back to work and get some discretionary income I am going to buy at least one of your paintings. I would rather have your painting than oxygen"
--Fred Kaplowitz
"I believe you are one of the most talented if not the finest artist I’ve ever viewed when it comes to buildings, people..and details. Your perspective and content is compelling. It’s reflective of actual memories. Your work draws one in as if the person viewing has been there, even if he or she hasn’t.
--Tomilynn Harris
Dearest Ellen, This message is long overdue. I just wanted to personally thank you for sharing your paintings on Facebook. I never would have discovered your works and talent without the GV Grapevine. I am such a huge fan and so appreciative. I wake up to your Village Cigars and Jane Street Tavern in my bedroom, go downstairs and see Sevilla and the Corner Bistro in my kitchen when I grab my coffee. The feelings that your work evokes in me is like nothing else. Memories of my parents and my childhood in the city. Initially I thought I was drawn to your work because of my connection to the subject, but it is so much more than that. Your use of color, and light and movement. I literally get chills from your winter scenes, feel the dampness in the air, the breeze, and smell the seaport. I have plenty of photos, and paintings from other New York artists, but they don’t tug at my heartstrings the way your paintings do. I cherish them and feel truly honored to own a few. I have added Keuka Lake to the top of my bucket list of places I must see for myself. I have studied your website and have endless favorites. I cannot wait to add to my collection. Your daily posts have truly been such a highlight and bright spot this past year in lockdown and quarantine and I am so so grateful. Sincerely, thank you! Until we meet again. ????
-Maggie Goodman Ford
Ellen handles the subject like the best of the Ashcan School of 80 years ago but with her way cool 21st century skills:First, with her confident, economical brush work that neither loses nor compromises anything.Second, her great composition. It begins with perfectly chosen image framing and ends with superb positive space v negative space interplay.And third, along with judiciously rendered (never over-rendered) stationary and moving elements that tease along with areas of detail and simplification, there is the light and color treatments.You're thinking,'Hell, Joe, you shoulda put that first! The lighting! The color! Yeah! That's what struck me first!'I completely agree. That's the beautiful payoff. I just wanted to remind everyone that a great painter puts far more into her work than what first meets the eye.
-Joe Madden
"the funny/fascinating/remarkable part is that the detail isn't really that terribly detailed. It seems to be a matter of the decision of which spare brush strokes will make the observation accurate and complete without having to be infinitesimally fussy. I'd never thought about it, but in a way, it's not unlike Hemingway's writing - it's all there, but not burdened with a surfeit of words. And I love Ellen's light. Light has color, temperature, and you can pretty much know the time of year and the time of day by the color of the sky and the color of light on the objects. Trees that need virtually no precision; they're just an effusion of greens! Ellen's New York City is a personal statement of what the city should be..."
-Anne Spoonhour
"AGAIN ... I don't know if its just me. But everytime i view your paintings. There is always something in the way your skies are colored. For me they capture a specific time of day which sets the tone. Then all the subject matters come under your spell. I am in awe of your talent with a brush. .."
-Freddy Berrios
"Freddy Berrios , no, it's not just you. The skies, and the quality of that particular light, can set not only the time of day but rather precisely the time of season, within a week or so; if you have any frame of reference, you may actually sense the temperature, even the difference you might perceive stepping from sun into cooler shadow. I can smell the smells of grapes, of autumn earth, even the smell of the waters around the city, or rain on pavement, I can even feel mist on my face or the quick knifelike way a wind can gust...Some folks have praised Ellen's attention to detail, but I usually find that her work doesn't at all concern itself with the fine points, because the elements she does focus on present the complete picture, You KNOW what's there, where you are. And a couple of times, especially in the country paintings, I've had the sense of knowing the place!"
- Anne Spoonhour
Richard Uzzi: "I have mentioned a time or two before how much I appreciate your artistic talent and style. The best thing I can say is that as someone born in Little Italy and having walked these streets, looking at this painting brings me back there again. It is not the image of the buildings that you capture, it is their soul."
"I have no regrets about having aged, but one. This is not a time for me to buy each of Ellen Bradshaw's paintings I would love to live with." GRB
MY AGE HAS GOTTEN IN THE WAY OF COLLECTING ART AGAIN. BUT IF I WERE, THE WALLS OF MY HOME WOULD BE FILLED WITH THE BEAUTIFUL ART OF ELLEN BRADSHAW.
George Broadhead
Salmagundi Club. New York, NY, “Summer Living”
Salmagundi Club, New York, NY, “Non-Juried Summer Exhibition”
