Ellen Chuse has been a working artist since graduation from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1967 with a BFA in Fine Arts Sculpture. She received her MFA from Queens College, CUNY in 1971 and in 1972 she was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to Italy in Sculpture. During those years Chuse worked primarily in fired clay and also made the first of many series of drawings in charcoal. During the 1970's her sculpture was exhibited in various galleries in New York and New Jersey. In the mid 1980's her charcoal drawings were widely exhibited in Austin, Texas where she lived for four years. Several were included in traveling exhibitions of the Texas Fine Arts Association and her work was included in a show at the Laguna Gloria Museum in Austin in 1986.
Focusing on drawing in charcoal and pencil and by 1998 beginning to experiment with color in pastel and chalk she opened up new areas of exploration for her work. In the summer of 2000 she moved her studio to the Gowanus Canal area in Brooklyn and began to participate in the annual Gowanus Open Studio Tours. In 2001, finding the fragility of pastel and chalk too confining as she strove to learn more about color, Chuse began working in paint. After several years of painting on canvas and board she returned to paper. In 2004 and 2005 she created a series of large black and white drawings combining charcoal, paint and graphite. In recent years she has focused on color - often combining graphite or charcoal with acrylic or oil on paper. Ellen has been a member of the 440 Gallery in Brooklyn, NY since 2007 and recently had her fourth solo show of works on paper - Finding the Root - in March 2014.