Ellen Buselli is a still life painter who takes inspiration from traditional still life painters from several eras, citing as her influences painters like Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Henri Fantin la Tour, John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, Emil Carlsen, Giorgio Morandi and the Dutch master painters.
Buselli chooses her subjects with great care, setting up the compositions with her own collection of pueblo pottery, Roman glass and American Arts and Crafts movement pottery. Despite the refinement evident in her finished works, she works directly, without preliminary sketches or value studies. She works with a carefully controlled palette, giving particular emphasis to establishing the right background against which to array the colors, values and edges of her subjects.
Unfortunately, the images on her web site are frustratingly small, giving little feeling for the surface qualities or brush handling in her work. You will find a few larger images in some of the additional resources I’ve listed below.
Buselli was the subject of a cover article in the January 2008 issue of American Artist, for which there is an accompanying gallery on the magazine’s site. There is also an article reprinted form the November, 2007 issue, in which there is a description of her working methods.
