Ellie Hogan
Ellie Hogan is a Milwaukee-based artist who grew up on the remains of a historic dairy farm in rural Wisconsin. Hogan is completing their Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and will graduate in 2025 with a Studio Arts degree focused in Painting & Drawing and Printmaking & Book Arts with a minor in Art History.
Hogan is influenced by the interactions between nature, time, and architecture, a fascination especially nourished by their upbringing. Their work aims to combine these interests with passions for socioeconomic equality and environmental justice. Hogan has received several awards for their work, including the Laurence Rathsack Arts Scholarship. They have participated in numerous exhibitions in Milwaukee, including four consecutive installations of Crossing Over in UWM’s Union Art Gallery, Brushworks in the Arts Center Gallery, and were an invitational artist at the Nut Factory's 2025 open studio night. They also have work in UWM’s permanent art collection.
Hogan is currently involved in two Milwaukee area internships. They are completing a second semester of undergraduate Art Historical research for the Emile H. Mathis Gallery and are serving as shop intern and assistant at Anchor Press Paper and Print. Hogan currently is preparing for several group exhibitions in the coming months, including their BFA Thesis exhibition in May. They plan to continue working and exhibiting in the Milwaukee area, working with AP3, and aim to eventually receive a Master of Fine Arts.
Bio
Artist Statement
Ellie Hogan is an artist working in painting and printmaking whose work depicts the interiors of abandoned and decaying homes. Hogan has a passion for experimentation in material application, merging this with an interest in diagrammatic “drawing”. Hogan’s process is driven by using alternative application practices, abstraction, and a great deal of play to create a representational image. Throughout the body of work, pattern and texture are created through stamping, stenciling, and image transfers of flat patterns that eventually come to life through loose layers of light and shadow. These techniques allow Hogan to play with depictions of reality and form puzzles of discerning the flat from the dimensional. The result is a pictorial space that is actively undergoing construction through the painting and drawing process, while simultaneously expressing decay. This material expression and visual unbecoming of a recognizable home space intersect with the narrative concepts of dilapidation and decay, creating visual and material metaphors for the description of loss and deterioration.
The subject is fixed at the crossroads between human sentimentality and memory, mortality and decay, and a passion for history and current events. The work is created with contexts of economic, social, and natural disaster in mind; specifically pertaining to impacts of housing crisis, economic inequality, consumption and displacement. Hogan’s work navigates these ideas through the portrait of a person’s home and personal objects, with their presence removed entirely, raising questions such as, “What causes a person to leave everything behind?” or “What happens to our belongings when they are no longer ours?”