“TREES IN SUNSET”: This work by Ellen Veden is featured in “Princeton Unveiled: Landscapes in Texture and Color,” opening at the center for Modern Aging Princeton with a reception on Thursday, September 25 from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibition is on view through October 10.
“Princeton Unveiled: Landscapes in Texture and Color,” an exhibition of landscapes by Ellen Veden, opens at the Center for Modern Aging Princeton on Thursday, September 25 from 5 to 7 p.m. The reception is open to the public. Veden, a native New Yorker, has worked and lived all over the world, and has been a resident of Princeton since the start of the 21st century. The exhibition is on view through October 10.
While a naturalistic painter, Veden also uses intense coloration, often focusing on how changes in light like sunsets reveal a subtle lyricism in Princeton and surrounding areas.
After she received a BFA in fine arts and a MA in anthropology, she entered the New York art world during the period when New York was beginning to replace Paris as the center. She lived in a studio loft on Grand Street in SoHo and participated in many juried group shows with solo exhibitions at the Fimbres gallery. Her friends were the Post World War II generation of artists — abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, and photographers like Robert Frank. Included in the exhibition is a portrait of Veden by painter and print artist June Leaf, Frank’s wife. To support herself, Veden taught art at the High School of Music and Art, now the LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and the Performing Arts.
Veden also had friends in the burgeoning Post World War II television industry. One of those friends who was a producer at NBC saw a program she produced with her students on Manhattan Cable Television and offered her a job in television broadcasting. After working at NBC and PBS where the main sponsor was AT&T, Veden was asked to join AT&T to manage its New York City office for Skynet Satellite Services. During that time, she was also a member of the New York City Arts and Business Council and one of the early volunteers at the Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, founded by actor and philanthropist Paul Newman to provide a summer camp experience for seriously ill children.
Interested in living abroad, Veden left AT&T to join France Telecom first, and later Teleglobe Canada, and Belgacom to assist those companies in pursuing the U.S. broadcast satellite network business. Always intellectually curious, Veden was led by those experiences to join Motorola and LG Electronics to learn the product end of cellular and digital technology.
When Veden retired and relocated to Princeton, she renewed her youthful involvement in painting and drawing, using the surrounding area as her inspiration. She is a member of a group of artists called the Creative Collective and her work has been shown in over 50 venues in the area including the juried Ellarslie, Trenton City Museum shows. She now serves on the Trenton Museum Society at Ellarslie board, and the board of the Princeton Adult School.
Judith Brodsky is the curator of this show. Prints will be available with half the proceeds going to the Center for Modern Aging Princeton.
The Center for Modern Aging is at 101 Poor Farm Road.