In the project space
Ellen Kahn exhibits a new group of watercolors inspired by her fascination with medieval botanical prints from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Fresh from a residency in Spain, Kahn extends her interest in Spanish and Islamic tile to an exploration of pattern, symmetry, and layering in her depictions of ancient medicinal plant forms. These new paintings utilize a warm organic palette that seems to have been extracted from the plants themselves. The results are wonderfully deft watercolors that suggest rich damasks and tapestries with their intricate and carefully modulated relationships of positive and negative space.

Ellen Kahn has exhibited extensively in the United States. Her work has received critical attention in the New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among other publications. Ellen Kahn�s work is in many public and private collections including the US State Department. This is her first solo exhibition at metaphor.