Biography
Michael Edward Ellison (1952–2001), who survived a rare direct lightning strike at the height of his artistic career, was among the most acclaimed young artists to emerge from Atlanta’s 1980s art scene. Born in Manhattan, he and his younger sister, Marcia, were moved to Atlanta as infants by their adoptive parents, Gertrude and Harold Ellison. Harold owned a successful cabinet-making business founded in the 1930s, and Gertrude was a seamstress, designer, and real estate entrepreneur. In the early 1960s, Harold built the family’s new home in Collier Heights – then the neighborhood of Atlanta’s Black bourgeoisie. Michael’s love of drawing, which began in childhood, was shaped by his creative household and by one of his father’s closest friends, the noted artist and printmaker Wilmer Jennings (1910–1990). Art was Michael's lifelong passion, and he was rarely seen without his sketchbook. But his mother strongly preferred that he major in a more financially lucrative field in college. After studying business administration unsuccessfully, he joined the Army and, upon his discharge, used the GI Bill to enroll in art school. Ellison attended the Atlanta College of Art (ACA) from 1979 to 1982, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA). He received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from Georgia State University in 1983.
The post-impressionist artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) had a major influence on Ellison's approach to art. Michael admired Lautrec's ability to capture, with meticulous detail, people's everyday genuineness and their unique settings. Following that approach, Ellison developed a remarkable ability to sketch people in their natural surroundings, including bars, nightclubs, churches, buses, trains, parks, and street scenes. Only once in his lifetime did he complete a work of art not derived from a real-life scene.
Shortly after becoming a professional artist, Michael's prints won numerous first-place prizes and earned rave reviews from local and regional art critics. Although he was well known as an exquisite printmaker, he was also a superb draftsman and innovative collagist. Ellison's prodigious drawings and collages have only recently been discovered. The McIntosh Gallery represented him in Atlanta, and the June Kelly Gallery represented him in New York City. Louisa McIntosh, a mover and shaker in the Atlanta art scene at the time, had some of the country's most prominent Black artists as clients, including Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Benny Andrews, and Lois Mailou Jones. Yet she raved about Michael, often calling him an artistic genius.
Ellison's art chronicled the everyday lives of ordinary people in Atlanta and other metropolitan areas, as well as in small rural towns and communities. His unique approach to printmaking, part figurative, part impressionistic, and part expressionistic (as described by Michael), was marked by continuous experimentation, often layering up to 50 colors to achieve a thick, painterly texture. He frequently scratched the print and block matrix to reveal underlying colors. Occasionally, he lifted ink with tissue paper to make prints more painterly and collaged objects into prints to create a multidimensional effect.
Before 1985, Ellison primarily worked in linoleum, and his color palette was somewhat muted. He frequently added collage elements to his prints. During this period, his figures showed greater facial definition. By the mid-80s, Ellison switched from linoleum to woodblocks. He felt that registration with wood was more consistent, and he preferred the textural qualities it gave the prints. By this time, he had adopted his signature style of elongated geometric figures devoid of facial features. Stylistically, he sought to convey the essence and personalities of individuals through the shape and motion of their figurative outlines. His print editions were now always 10. During the final decade of his life, Ellison's color palette brightened significantly, and his prints became more complex and included more environmental elements.
Michael operated his own printing press and never allowed anyone to assist him in the process. However, printing was the final stage of a multi-level work process. In the first stage, he always sketched a real-life scene, followed by a complete graphite drawing in ebony. Then he usually created a collage or a Cray-Pas oil pastel drawing. The relief print, for which he is best known, represented the last stage of Ellison's creative process.
His gallery sold only his prints, not his works in other media. While the reason is unclear, it was likely a strategic business decision. As a result, many of his drawings, collages, and oil pastels remain in his Estate and have never been seen publicly. They constitute a trove of exciting works and offer new insights into the artist's method, vision, and process.
At the peak of his popularity, on a stormy night in Wadley, Georgia, Michael was struck directly by lightning as he slept. Amazingly, he survived the one-in-a-million event. But the severe burns caused extensive damage to his arms and hands, and he lost dexterity and flexibility in his fingers and wrists. After a year of rehabilitation, Ellison began working again and produced some of his finest and most complex prints. Nevertheless, recurring health complications led to repeated hospitalizations and ultimately to his untimely death in July 2001.
In the final months of his life, Ellison created a 14-panel collage titled Stations of the Cross. The brilliant mixed-media work depicts Christ's final journey from condemnation to crucifixion and burial. He dedicated it to his mother, Gertrude, a devout Catholic throughout her life. The collage also serves as a metaphorical conclusion to Ellison's life journey, especially given the fact that he predicted the year of his death with uncanny accuracy.
Ellison’s art and method warrant deeper examination by scholars. But to him, the most important thing was the story and setting behind the print. It was the subject matter itself that kept Ellison so preoccupied with capturing moments in time. Michael asserts, "Sometimes people just think, oh, I did this out of the clear blue sky. But there is a story behind each one, basically."
Ellison’s art and method warrant deeper examination by scholars. But to him, the most important thing was the story and setting behind the print. It was the subject matter itself that kept Ellison so preoccupied with capturing moments in time. Michael asserts, "Sometimes people just think, oh, I did this out of the clear blue sky. But there is a story behind each one, basically."