Ellen Picken: Waves Take Shape

“The dream hints, “This spirit should manifest . . . here are the stones in which it lives.” Bones, bricks, shells, ash, pine sap, and beeswax become paint, each painting a revivification of the Earth. The dreams are symbolic yet rooted in the patterns of physical sensations: breathe in-out-in, wake-sleep-wake, become-cease-become, daily tides, yearly seasons, and heart beating. We are the waves taking shape.” - Ellen Picken

Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present Waves Take Shape, Ellen Picken’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Consisting of a series of paintings and a mural encompassing the upper level of the gallery space, Picken utilizes materials from the land surrounding her home in Spokane, Washington, and items that contain a personal connection through a friend or neighbor to create handmade paints. These works explore the liminal space between the physical and spiritual realms while synchronizing with the cyclical nature of earth’s rhythms and their impact on our own lifecycle’s perpetual transformation. Waves Take Shape takes the form of a guide, opening the consciousness to investigate transitions—pathways and boundaries, secret places to protect, danger to avoid, and reactions to keep in check.

Picken’s process begins by gathering her materials—bricks found in the Spokane river, fallen off a crumbling building; yellow ocher collected from the site of the last home her great aunt and great grandmother lived in; eggshells from a neighbor’s hens; beeswax from a local beekeeper; bone from a deer found in a friend’s backyard; pine resin from the forests around her home; and salt from the Great Salt Lake and the Pacific Ocean are just some of items that become pigments for her paintings. Charged with meaning and sentiment these materials become the basis for her process. Shape and form begin to emerge on the clayboard panels while the subject matter is abstracted from dreams.

Symbolism plays an imperative role in these works. The snake is a protector of secrets and part of the consciousness that warns of the overwhelming power of the unconscious, fish imply nutrition both physically and spiritually, fire is a source of life and destruction, and a starburst is a release of condensed energy and indicator of new beginnings—these are a few of the readily visible images that appear. In the lower level of the gallery, the red glow of the ocher in the works is a reference to the Lammergeier vulture, alluding to the interconnectedness of life and death with its practice of covering itself in iron ocher and feeding off the bones of other animals. Picken utilizes the gallery’s layout to envision another level of symbolism. The gallery's upper level, painted throughout with undulating geometric patterns, suggests that one is entering a dream space within a dream. A reminder that the physical world is both incomprehensible yet unavoidable. A molecule of water is hardly observable, but an ocean is too large to see in its entirety. Between those extremes where matter appears solid and God becomes an icon, we can grasp meaning.