Ellen Chisdes Neuberg: August 2020
“I have always been interested in music and theater, played the piano since age 4, and taught piano at 16. I studied musical theater at Syracuse University, worked as a musical director for many years and eventually, at age 52, received a bachelor’s degree in psychology at Chatham College, interning at Western Psychiatric Institute in music and art therapy working with their geriatric population. I grew up in New York and moved 6 times before arriving in Pittsburgh in December of 1969. That was my other life! Art was something I always loved, so I started painting to “decorate” my walls with paintings since my own art was affordable. Hopefully, I have improved since then.
My volunteer work doing art therapy with transplant patients at Presbyterian University Hospital (now UPMC) and heading the Children’s Hospital Christmas Card Project for many years, gave me the desire to share other artists’ work, as well. GalleriE CHIZ (my nickname) was born in 1995 and, for 22 years I represented over 200 artists from all over the world. I am now using the CHIZ gallery building, on Ellsworth Avenue in Shadyside, as my own studio, having gone out of the “gallery” business in 2017 to more fully concentrate on my own art. During those years I have been a member of AAP, PSA, Group A, and many other local groups including The Pittsburgh Critique Group, a group of women artists that has been in existence for many years, 31 years for me. I have also experimented with and created numerous three dimensional works over the years, many of which, in addition to my paintings, have appeared at the Carnegie, Warhol, and Westmoreland Museums at AAP Annual Exhibits. There were also a few awards here and there over the years. My work appears in national and international, both private and corporate collections (3 PNC, Shadyside Hospital, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Haliburton Corp, Westinghouse) to name a few.
I usually paint in series, and am currently showing a new series entitled, “Living a Life…A Puzzlement”, at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art (www.thewestmoreland.org/exhibitions) in Greensburg as a virtual exhibit. The live exhibit is now rescheduled for November 20 – December 20, 2020, originally having been scheduled for May of this year. Here’s hoping that the museum will continue to be open then. In addition, I have another one-person show (August 26 – September 25, 2020) at Boxheart Gallery in Bloomfield. The paintings for both of these shows are somewhat different from the images that you will see here, most of which have been painted during this extraordinarily challenging political and health conscious time. I have, for these pieces, let it all hang out! As a recipient of a psychology degree, I can appreciate how we all need to often use our art to express our love, joy, stress, and other elements which define us at any given time.”
