Background
Phyllis Bryce Ely earned her BFA in painting and printmaking from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1981, studying with notable faculty Philip Bornarth, Bob Heischman, and Judd Williams. She paints en plein air and in the studio, and is regarded for her energized landscape paintings of western New York, the Finger Lakes, and Lake Ontario. She works primarily in oil, encaustic wax, and graphite.
Activity
Phyllis's work has been juried into in international, national, and regional exhibitions including the Memorial Art Gallery’s 68th Rochester-Fingerlakes Exhibition in 2023, the International Encaustic Artists’ Convergence Survey of Contemporary Encaustic, Art Center Morro Bay, CA (2022) and Made in New York 2022 at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, New York. In 2023, Phyllis became a fellow of the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts in Ithaca, NY with a two-week painting residency.
She has received multiple honors and awards, among them Best in Show at Main Street Arts Gallery’s national juried exhibit Utopia/Dystopia (2017) and the Gertrude Herdle Moore/Isabel Herdle Award Rochester-Finger Lakes Exhibition (2013).
In 2020, she was awarded an International Encaustic Artists Project Grant to develop a plein air encaustic process and “unplugged” work station. In 2019, Phyllis participated in the Rochester Contemporary Art Center’s Landscapes and the Unbuilt, an invitational exhibit of artist interactions with preserved land and natural places. Phyllis was commissioned to create the 2018 Park Ave Summer Art Fest poster. The poster, an encaustic painting, received the International Festival & Events Assoc. Pinnacle Award “Gold: Best Commemorative Poster.” That same year, she presented “Not My Father’s Iceberg,” a solo exhibit at Main Street Arts Gallery in Clifton Springs, NY featuring paintings made in response to her father’s Arctic photography while serving as a Navy photographer aboard an icebreaker in the 1950s.
Affiliations
Phyllis is represented by the Oxford Gallery and frequently shows with other regional galleries in New York. She serves on the board of The Dove Block Project in Geneva, NY, a community-based cultural center inspired by the creativity and originality of the modernist artist Arthur Dove and devoted to fostering the arts in the Finger Lakes region. Phyllis is an active member of the Genesee Valley Plein Air Painters, International Encaustic Artists, and Working With Wax Group, and is a past instructor at the Creative Workshop of the Memorial Art Gallery.
Location
Her studio is in the Hungerford building in downtown Rochester, home to four floors of creative people in a rambling former factory in Rochester, NY. Phyllis shares a lively workspace with painters Anne McCune, Maureen Church, and Patrice McPeak; together, they hold open studio hours with other Hungerford artists First Fridays (5-9 PM) and Second Saturdays (10 AM-3 PM), and by appointment.
Phyllis’ work is included in many private and public collections including Bausch & Lomb, Xerox Corporation, Mobil Chemical Corporation, Rochester Institute of Technology, Nixon Peabody LLP, Jewish Senior Living of Rochester, and Rochester Community Savings Bank.
Phyllis lives on the Lake Ontario shoreline in New York state with her husband, Mark. She is the proud mother of Hannah Bryce Ely, CMI, biomedical illustrator, www.hannahbryceely.com.
Video interview with the Schweinfurth Art Center, Made in New York 2022 (scroll down a bit)
https://schweinfurthartcenter.org/made-in-ny-artist-talks/
Video interview with Pittsford Fine Art
https://fb.watch/3HTe3o3P7T/