Ellen Gallagher was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1965 and now works primarily between New York and Rotterdam. An important figure in American contemporary art, her practice spans painting, works on paper, collage, prints, video and installation.

1. Minimalist and abstract painting. From a distance, the works often resemble grids, repeated patterns and abstract compositions in pink or metallic tones, with affinities to post-minimalism.

2. Black culture and historical imagery. She frequently draws on twentieth-century Black magazines, wig advertisements, popular culture and racial stereotypes, cutting away, covering and reassembling images associated with oppression into a new visual language. Art21 notes her use of advertisements from magazines such as Ebony, Our World and Sepia. From a distance, the works appear abstract; up close, details such as eyes, lips and wigs emerge.

3. Oceans, mythology and historical memory. The sea frequently appears in her later work: marine life, whales, shipwrecks, the slave trade and imagined underwater Black mythologies such as Drexciya. Art21 also notes that in Watery Ecstatic she carves thick watercolor paper in a manner recalling the scrimshaw of the whaling era, creating mythical underwater creatures.