Ellen Fead Fields (that’s me, also sometimes known as Queen Bohemia) was born in Woodstock, New York, grew up in Los Angeles and spent my formative twenties back in Manhattan. I learned how to navigate the corporate world by day, and explored the New York art world by night. Eventually, I moved to the Central Coast of California and have lived here since 1990, with a glorious and mind-expanding 10-year stint in Yucatan, Mexico.
Through it all, I have drawn and painted out of sheer obsession. I have had little formal art training and spent a career in the computer industry before changing careers late in life to become a massage therapist. Until recently, art has taken a back seat in my life’s limousine… treated with reverence but not in the driver’s seat.
When COVID sent everyone to their room for a few months, I heard the Universe talking loud and clear and took to my easel. I also made a pact with myself to paint and draw and create from that day forward until the end… for after all, art does feel like the only thing left worth doing sometimes.
For the last few years, I have been obsessed with circles and spheres. The circle is a potent symbol, full of history and meaning. Circles represent totality, perfection, eternity, the process of evolution and becoming. Spheres, of course, take the circle into another dimension. Since giving in to their magnetic pull on my psyche, I have been exploring the many ways that circles and spheres can be portrayed to evoke feelings of order and chaos, weight and lightness, passion and peace, distance and proximity, beginning and becoming and so much more.
In choosing watercolor (so far) as her mode of expression, I have surrendered to a loving interaction between precision and serendipity. With the interaction between the clarity of water and the intensity of color, there is always an element of unknown that expresses itself. The play between the artist and the medium is part of the joy of creating and is evident in the resulting patterns and shapes that emerge within the circles. No two are ever alike, though they all retain the same shape. Like snowflakes, like humans, like planets, like just about everything.
I hope that viewing my art will bring you joy, delight, perhaps a sense of peace and connection. I see my paintings as openings, doors to a world where magic is key, where strange and unfamiliar objects glitter or glow, inviting your eyes to open and your muscles to relax. I want my paintings to inspire you in a way that makes you take a deep breath, rooting you in the moment and beckoning you to expand your ideas of what is possible and what is beautiful.
Follow me on Instagram @queenbohemia or here on the website.