Ellen Moore Osborne                                 Artwork

Mixed Media Collage, 20" x 20"
"Rocket City Power Couple" combines a commonplace memory of human connection, captured in a snapshot, with the centrifugal forces of engines and orbiting forms. The couple’s intimate presence contrasts with the vast machinery surrounding them. They are everyday people being pulled into the unrelenting march toward industrial progress. The piece is about how private lives are continually shaped by larger forces of progress and history.

Mixed Media Collage, 20" x 20"
"The Last Goodbye" explores the universal experience of parting and leaving someone who is loved. I tried to capture the last moments of a figure reaching toward a departing train while the memory of the passenger was already fading into the past.

Mixed Media Collage, 12" x 12"

Mixed Media Collage, 20" x 16"
“Surfacing” explores the tension between descent and emergence, investigating what it means to both be held under and yet be liberated by waves of memory. The yellow submersible, while once a symbol of exploration and discovery, is also a metaphor for the forces that pull us downward. The layered figure in this piece represents the impulse to rise, even after a deep and disorienting dive.

Mixed Media Collage, 20" x 16"
"Weekend Visit" represents my memories of the times my parents came to visit me at college. I was simultaneously trying to become my own person while remaining connected to my family. The fragmentation of the buildings, cars, and atmosphere symbolizes the layers of distortion in my memory, and the dichotomy of being both child and adult, dependent and independent, belonging and exploring. The “Exit” sign captures my realization that to enter a new place, either physically or mentally, one must leave the current one behind.

Mixed Media Collage, 20" x 16"
"Gasoline Man" is about mid-century America, when the automobile reshaped our lives. A towering 76 gas pump dominates the foreground, a symbol of power, progress, and the fuel that made mobility possible. Behind it, rows of nearly identical houses suggest the conformity of postwar suburbia, where stability often came with an expectation of sameness. The casual figures are reminders of the freedom the automobile promised. The open road and the “travel bug” invited folks to push past their own neighborhoods, see new landscapes, and imagine broader possibilities.