Featured Artist—Elizabeth Ellison

FEATURED ARTIST-ELIZABETH ELLISON Elizabeth Ellison____________________ Ashley Lawrence Elizabeth Ellison is an artist in tune with nature. For over thirty years she has worked professionally in many media. Perhaps best known are the watercolors she creates on her handmade paper through a combination of nature studies and intuition using traditional and Asian techniques as well as American Indian motifs. Her color choices and her marks inspire a sense of a buzzing, internal energy. Tina Benson, of the Fort Pierce Tribune, remarks, "Her spirit seems to blend like a watercolor wash into the world in which she lives. The resulting vision is such a fusion of the artist's mind with the natural world that it startles." Ellison is the owner and operator of Elizabeth Ellison Watercolors, a studio/gallery located in the old Clampitt Hardware Building on the town square in Bryson City, North Carolina. She was the cover artist for Ebbing and Flowing Springs and the illustrator for The Chinese Poet Awakens, both written by Jeff Daniel Marion who has a poem in this issue ofAppalachianHeritage. Her artexhibits are numerous and include the Appalachian Center at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, the Shiele Museum in Gastonia, North Carolina, the Native American Invitational show at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Okefenokee Heritage Center in Waycross, Georgia. In 2006 she and her husband, George Ellison, created a book of her art and his essays about the flora and fauna of the Smokies entitled Blue Ridge Nature Journal: Reflections on the Appalachian Mountains in Essays and Art. Katherine Stripling Byer, the Poet Laureate of North Carolina, wrote of it: "The prose and images are never flashy and pretentious; like the artists themselves, the words and illustrations remain grounded, as if to say, 'Here we are, this is what we've seen, and we invite you into our lifelong experience of living in the mountains of Western North Carolina.'" Ellison, who is of Occaneechi Indian descent and hails from Milton, North Carolina, lives with her husband on land that adjoins the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, where they continue to paint and write. http://www.elizabethellisonwatercolors.com/ 120 ...