Ella Moen (aka Ella Moen Odorfer, 1901-1986) Artist's Studio circa 1930s Oil on Canvas P2912

This very painting is reproduced in Maurine St Gaudens' 4-volume survey "Emerging From The Shadows: A Survey of Women Artists Working In California, 1860-1960" (on page 759 of Volume III).

As a young girl, South Dakota native Ella Moen knew she was destined for the arts and applied herself with passion from the start, and very soon she began working as an arts educator as well as well as a painter and sculptor, and, later, as a photographer as well.  Her journey took her eventually to New York, back to South Dakota, then to Fresno in California, which she would make her home, and, in Mexico, a meeting and a life-long marriage to the noted emigré ceramist Adolf Odorfer with whom she would weather the storms of the rest of the twentieth century. It is not too much to say that by the time of her death Fresno's artistic community owed, and owes, her an immense debt, she being one of the creators of the Fresno Art Museum as well as a founder of the Fresno Arts Council and other allied organizations, all the while producing an immense output of her own work in diverse styles, whichever she deemed would suit the work at hand.

Art measures 20" x 28", frame is 26" x 30".