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Ellen Frances is an American multidisciplinary artist based in New York City. Her work merges painting, poetry, and performance art derived from extensive historical research. Her presentations of silent poems conveyed through ballet d'action and ancient Greco-Roman-style pantomime, in front of original large-scale paintings, have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail and the New York Times. She was a featured artist at the VOLTA International Art Fair in the spring of 2023 where she presented paintings, and performances that included a movement monologue adapted for her by critically acclaimed author Frederic Tuten. In the summer of 2023, she was invited by the Yeats Society in Gort, Ireland, to be the first-ever artist in residence at Thoor Ballylee; the former 15th c. home of Nobel Prize-winning poet and playwright W.B. Yeats. She is also an essayist and a contributor to the London-based arts publication The Art Newspaper.

Background
Ellen Frances is a self-taught painter, having taken an interest in oils and watercolors at an early age. Her paintings have been shown at VOLTA Art Fair, with Wadström Tönnheim Gallery (Spain), and at Mana Contemporary. Her experimental movement films have shown at Anthology Film Archives. She was trained in classical ballet and pantomime for ballet as a child by Todd Bolander, later performing with his company in the corps de ballet. She studied at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School, and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School, among others. Her performance work includes written poems as libretto, hand-made costumes, painted backdrops, painted papier mâché masks, lyrics, and direction on original scores. Her presentations gained notoriety after she was showcased in underground West Village literary salons hosted by Beckett Rosset; a writer and the son of legendary publisher Barney Rosset. She is of Irish descent.