Skip to main content

Ellen Hackl Fagan

American, b. 1960

Ellen Hackl Fagan builds connections between color and sound using installations, interactive games, and collaborative projects that combine color-and-texture saturated paintings with music and digital technologies. Each installation invites viewers an opportunity to explore synaesthesia for themselves.

Balanced between randomness and intention, like jazz music, Fagan’s art continues to reveal limitless possibilities for improvisation. Saturation, accident, and the nature of the materials impose their own voice. Color seduces.

Blue is an invitation to get reckless.

Rich, powdery, dangerous, The Void.

Jumping off generates new information. Painting opens the door to life’s patterns. Echoing life’s chaotic beauty, her sources can be linked to pop music, Rimbault, Jungian psychology, the theory of correspondences, Minimalist and decorative art.

Fagan is the inventor of the Reverse Color Organ and the ColorSoundGrammar Game, two projects that enable viewers to interact aurally with color. In collaboration with web architect Joshie Fishbein, the Reverse Color Organ is a web app, downloadable to a smartphone, thus placing this synaesthetic tool into peoples’ hands to be used, not only to expand the language of color, but also as a crowd-sourced musical instrument.

Fagan exhibits her work extensively throughout New England and New York City. In 2014 she expanded her independent curatorial practice into a full-time business and is now the owner of ODETTA Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. There, she maintains her painting studio and is an active member of this vibrant arts community.

Find original Ellen Hackl Fagan paintings and drawings on 1stDibs.

(Biography provided by ODETTA Gallery)

Styles
Abstract
Materials
Paint
Acrylic Paint
Related Artists
Clay Johnson
ura Segal
: Anya Spielman
skillicorn, Eichel
Kathleen Cammarata
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_20 Moons, 2014, Enamel, Ink
By Ellen Hackl Fagan
Located in Darien, CT
Ellen Hackl Fagan is an interdisciplinary abstract painter who believes that synaesthesia can be taught. Through interactive tools and crowd sourcing, Fagan is developing a correspo...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist Ellen Hackl Fagan

Materials

Enamel

Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_20 Moons, 2014, Enamel, Ink

Ellen Hackl Fagan
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_20 Moons, 2014, Enamel, Ink, 2014

H 40 in W 32 in D 2 in
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_In Stride_Abstraction_Blue
By Ellen Hackl Fagan
Located in Darien, CT
Ellen Hackl Fagan makes her paintings by pouring paint around the forms of commonplace, mass-produced objects placed on wet sheets of paper or panels – little fruit cartons, fragment...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist Ellen Hackl Fagan

Materials

Synthetic Paper, Ink, Panel

Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_In Stride_Abstraction_Blue

Ellen Hackl Fagan
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_In Stride_Abstraction_Blue, 2022

H 14 in W 11 in
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Orbs, 2016, acrylic on casein paper, meditative, spiritual
By Ellen Hackl Fagan
Located in Darien, CT
Ellen Hackl Fagan makes her paintings by pouring paint around the forms of commonplace, mass-produced objects placed on wet sheets of paper or panels – little fruit cartons, fragment...
Category

2010s Abstract Expressionist Ellen Hackl Fagan

Materials

Ink, Acrylic, Rag Paper

Ellen Hackl Fagan, Orbs, 2016, acrylic on casein paper, meditative, spiritual

Ellen Hackl Fagan
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Orbs, 2016, acrylic on casein paper, meditative, spiritual, 2016

H 14 in W 11 in
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Air Capture_2020_Color Field
By Ellen Hackl Fagan
Located in Darien, CT
Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue is a series of larger paintings on 8 ply museum board and large sheets of rag paper and clayboard panels that have been created since the winter of 2...
Category

2010s Color-Field Ellen Hackl Fagan

Materials

Acrylic, Pigment, Panel

Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Air Capture_2020_Color Field
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Air Capture_2020_Color Field

Ellen Hackl Fagan
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Air Capture_2020_Color Field, 2020

H 10 in W 8 in
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Big Blue_2020
By Ellen Hackl Fagan
Located in Darien, CT
Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue is a series of larger paintings on 8 ply museum board and large sheets of rag paper that have been created since the winter of 2016. Using domestic construction materials from her garage, extras from home improvement projects or the garden, have been captured, much like a photogram, but with paint, not silver. By blending photography and painting, Fagan finds that the patterns created with industrial, mass-produced objects around the house and garage, speak to her interest in producing paintings that link to sound. These works are portraits of the artist’s home, its history, and the materials used to build that maintain her home. Ellen Hackl Fagan builds connections between color and sound using installations, interactive games, and collaborative projects that combine color-and-texture saturated paintings with music...
Category

2010s Color-Field Ellen Hackl Fagan

Materials

Paper, Ink, Acrylic, Pigment

Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Big Blue_2020
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Big Blue_2020

Ellen Hackl Fagan
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Big Blue_2020, 2016

H 108 in W 60 in
Ellen Hackl Fagan, ColorSoundGrammar_3 2010, Abstraction, Meditative
By Ellen Hackl Fagan
Located in Darien, CT
Inviting the accidental while painting, the artist's materials continue to reveal limitless possibilities for improvisation, like jazz music. Influenced by scientific theories-both real and imagined, kitsch, music, decorative art and indigenous textiles, Fagan's abstract paintings and interactive performance build connections between color and surface to sound. This exploration has led to creating a series of interactive games with viewers, the most recent being The Alphabet Game. To play, viewers select, from colored squares, the color(s) that best represent each note in the familiar ABC Song melody. Through these playful interventions their thoughts about color and music are explored in-depth. Documenting their responses in the form of photographs and notes in journals, Fagan has compiled the results of fifteen artists who played the Alphabet Game during a lecture on color where the artist was the guest presenter in order to create this particular painting. Fagan distilled the data gathered and painted this visualization of a color/sound alphabet based on the colors selected by this artist's group. These alphabet paintings introduce a wonderful completion to this pseudo-scientific investigation and celebrate painting...
Category

2010s Conceptual Ellen Hackl Fagan

Materials

Enamel

Ellen Hackl Fagan, ColorSoundGrammar_3 2010, Abstraction, Meditative
Ellen Hackl Fagan, ColorSoundGrammar_3 2010, Abstraction, Meditative

Ellen Hackl Fagan
Ellen Hackl Fagan, ColorSoundGrammar_3 2010, Abstraction, Meditative, 2010

H 60 in W 124 in D 2 in
Ellen Hackl Fagan_Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Paver 1_2020_found object
By Ellen Hackl Fagan
Located in Darien, CT
Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue is a series of paintings and sculptures that have been created since the spring of 2014. Ellen Hackl Fagan_SeekingtheSoundofCobaltBlue_Found Object...
Category

2010s Arte Povera Ellen Hackl Fagan

Materials

Concrete

Ellen Hackl Fagan_Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Paver 1_2020_found object
Ellen Hackl Fagan_Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Paver 1_2020_found object

Ellen Hackl Fagan
Ellen Hackl Fagan_Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Paver 1_2020_found object, 2020

H 4.25 in W 5.5 in D 1.5 in
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Bliss_4_2020_Color Field
By Ellen Hackl Fagan
Located in Darien, CT
Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue is a series of larger paintings on 8 ply museum board and large sheets of rag paper and clayboard panels that have been created since the winter of 2...
Category

2010s Color-Field Ellen Hackl Fagan

Materials

Acrylic, Panel, Pigment

Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Bliss_4_2020_Color Field
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Bliss_4_2020_Color Field

Ellen Hackl Fagan
Ellen Hackl Fagan, Seeking the Sound of Cobalt Blue_Bliss_4_2020_Color Field, 2020

H 10 in W 9 in
Browse all Art from Ellen Hackl Fagan
Shop Now

Artists Similar to Ellen Hackl Fagan

Clay Johnson
Shop All Clay Johnson
Maura Segal
Shop All ura Segal
Anya Spielman
Shop All : Anya Spielman
David Skillicorn
Shop All skillicorn, Eichel
Kathleen Cammarata
Shop All Kathleen Cammarata
Michele Morata
Shop All Michèle Morata
Michael Rich
Shop All Michael Rich – Michael Rich
Jane Booth
Shop All Jane Booth
Greg Ragland
Shop All Greg Ragland

Ellen Hackl Fagan art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Ellen Hackl Fagan art available for sale on 1stDibs. If you’re browsing the collection of art to introduce a pop of color in a neutral corner of your living room or bedroom, you can find work that includes elements of blue, purple, orange and other colors. You can also browse by medium to find art by Ellen Hackl Fagan in paint, acrylic paint, synthetic resin paint and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 21st century and contemporary and is mostly associated with the abstract style. Not every interior allows for large Ellen Hackl Fagan art, so small editions measuring 6 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of KOKO HOVAGUIMIAN, Deborah Bigeleisen, and Kathleen Cammarata. Ellen Hackl Fagan art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $750 and tops out at $32,400, while the average work can sell for $2,640.

Recently Viewed

View All