Painting Demonstration with CAC Artist Ellen Howard – 115th Gold Medal Exhibition

Join us on Sunday, September 13, 2026 as we welcome Gold Medal Artist, CAC Artist Member, and Vice President Ellen Howard to the Hilbert Museum. Ellen will grace us with an amazing gouache painting demonstration for all in the Hilbert Museum’s Burra community room. Come and celebrate the closing of the 115th Annual Gold medal exhibition! What: Painting Demonstration with CAC Artist Ellen Howard When: Sunday, September 13, 2026; 11:00 am – 1:00 p.m. Where: The Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University, 167 North Atchison Street Orange, California 92866 Ticket: No Charge About Ellen Howard: Ellen Howard is an impressionist painter drawn to moments of quiet clarity—those brief, luminous pauses when light, land, and emotion align. Her work is rooted in sustained observation and presence, shaped by the belief that painting is not simply about what we see, but about how deeply—and honestly—we are willing to notice. Whether painting en plein air or in the studio, Ellen seeks the emotional resonance of place: the hush of early morning, the steadiness of a solitary tree, the way a river bends and continues on its course. These moments are not grand declarations, but quiet affirmations. Her paintings reflect a reverence for stillness in a fractured world, offering landscapes as places of reflection, resilience, and calm rather than escape. Working primarily in oils and gouache, Ellen embraces impermanence—changing light, shifting weather, fleeting impressions—as an essential and generative part of the creative process. Uncertainty becomes an invitation rather than an obstacle, allowing intuition, restraint, and trust to guide each painting as it unfolds. The work emerges as a response to time and lived experience, not as a fixed or predetermined outcome. Now based in Boise, Idaho, Ellen finds renewed inspiration in the expansive skies, winding rivers, and open farmlands of the Treasure Valley. This landscape—both intimate and vast—continues to shape her work, offering space to listen, to breathe, and to paint with intention. This is an educational program of the 115th Annual Gold Medal Exhibition Images: Ellen Howard Painting in Nature(above right) & Fall’s Splendor, gouache on panel, 5 x 7 (above)