painter amongst other things
Born in Hayward, California, Ellena has been painting and creating for over ten years. She works in oil and watercolor, painting internal and external landscapes in combination with emotion and history. Ellena graduated in the spring of 2021 from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa with a Bachelor's in Fine Art with a focus in painting and a minor in Gender and Sexualities. She has been working all over the East Bay as a teaching artist since 2022, working with students aged 2-16. Some galleries that have shown their work include Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco, Wailoa Center in Hilo, and HPU Kaneohe Gallery. They are currently a studio artist at Root Division in San Francisco.
My creative practice explores longing, memory, and the enduring echo of place through the language of landscape painting. I am drawn to the way land holds memory: how it stores the traces of what has happened upon it. Every cultivation, every scar, every act of care alters its surface and its spirit—shifting soil, reshaping growth, stirring energy. I view the land as the origin of the body, and ultimately, its destination. I am an extension of the land and thus the work I make is informed by the land around me, the land from where my family came from, and the land I care for. A reciprocity of care, attention, and nourishment passes between us. My work centers the responsibility—and tenderness—of caring for the places that sustain us. Pulling from the memory of my body, the memory from those before me, and the memory of the land, I create oil paintings that reflect both the internal landscape of the body and the external, geographic world.
ellena.ruiz25@gmail.com
photo by Quentin Torres
