Born and raised in Fort Worth Texas, Robert Ellison began his artistic journey as a photographer while studying philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin. In 1959, Ellison moved from Texas to New York City to join the thriving poetry and art scene in Greenwich Village. Inspired by the work of the abstract expressionists, Ellison explored non-representation first through his photography then through painting. He joined a vibrant artist group that included Milton Resnick, Lester Johnson, Wolf Kahn, Willem and Elaine DeKooking, and frequented poetry readings, art collectives, and ‘happenings.’ Informed by his self study of this dynamic art scene, he began experimenting with oil painting and set up a work/live studio in a loft on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in which he painted in a variety of scale and frame shapes, including diptychs and triptychs.
His paintings in the 1960’s evolved out of the context of the late abstract expressionist movement. Johnson and Resnick’s paintings and thinking were a significant influence on Ellison. In the mid-1960s, Ellison used short brushstrokes, weaving and smudging them into an overall skein across the surface of the painting. Around 1966, in search of a more personal way forward, he began to employ large, individual brushstrokes of oil paint with collage-like application. This type of work had no label, but was thought of as something like a non-representational neo-pointillism. He also began a series of watercolors in a similar manner as well as cut paper collages stapled to plywood. Ellison exhibited through out the 1960’s in New York and Texas galleries, including the Aegis Gallery, and joined the Twenty-Third St. Workshop Club, an evolution of the earlier Eighth St. Club.
In 1971, Ellison took a brief pause from painting to work in clay at the Grand Street Potters in SoHo. By 1973, he had returned to painting with a fresh vision. Pioneering a new medium for mark making, he abandoned the brush for a slender baton made out of ash (cut from a sail batten). Using the baton for semi-controlled splattering of the paint while the canvas was on the wall, he was able to expand the ways for constructing non-representational painting out of small fragments of color while achieving an overall, three-dimensional surface. He continued to paint in his signature ‘splatter’ style through the mid 1980’s, producing works that examined a personal vision of color and form and exhibiting his paintings in New York galleries such as the Landmark Gallery in SoHo. Ellison briefly returned to painting with a brush, however, he never abandoned the splattered work made with batons, stating, “It was still too much a part of me.”
In the mid 1980’s, using his keen eye for form, color, and texture sharpened by his years in as a painter, Ellison shifted his attention to amassing “arguably one of the best” collections of American and European art pottery in America, which he had begun in the early 1970’s. He delved into researching, writing, and lecturing, and returned to photography to document his collection in vibrantly detailed photographs. He continued his artistic pursuits during these years, producing unique wood furniture and jewelry. After decades as an expert in the field, author of several books on the American art pottery movement and, in particular, the pioneering potter George Ohr, Ellison donated the bulk of his American ceramics collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in 2009, securing his legacy in the field of decorative arts and creating “one of the great repositories of Art Pottery in the world.”
His exuberant paintings from the 1970s and 1980s can currently be seen at the Westbrook gallery in Carmel, California.