Ellen Moore Osborne

Printmaking, Photography, Mixed Media

Ellen Moore Osborne is a printmaker, photographer, and mixed media collage artist living in Charlottesville, Virginia. She originally attended East Carolina University with the intention of becoming a graphic designer but fell in love with printmaking instead. She received her BFA from East Carolina University in 1986 and an MFA from Louisiana State University in 1991. Her work has appeared in solo, group, and juried exhibitions in 37 states and several foreign countries.

Ellen’s work resides in many private and academic collections, including those of Louisiana State University, Georgia Tech State University, and Nicolet College in Wisconsin. Public collections include the Medical College of Virginia, which bought a large-scale piece entitled “Buster and the Cat,” a collage made from 1940s photos of her uncle as a little boy holding the family feline. Ellen’s graduate school thesis involved using old family photos to explore the similarities in the use of photography throughout generations.

For most of her life, Ellen has had a camera in her hand. The millions of photographs she has taken have provided inspiration for her work in printmaking and collage, in which she incorporates photographed figures into new, surrealistic situations.

Ellen has worked as a graphic designer for local, statewide, and national nonprofit organizations. She has taught graphic design and printmaking in Virginia at Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville and Mary Baldwin College in Staunton. She stepped away from the art scene for a while to focus on raising twin boys, who are now in college. Since 2011, she has worked as the Executive Director of a Charlottesville-based volunteer program which helps adult immigrants and refugees learn to read, write, and speak the English language.