''Watery Ecstatic'' is a 2003 painting by

Ellen Gallagher Ellen Gallagher (born December 16, 1965) is an American artist. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is held in the permanent collections of many major museums. Her media include painting, works on paper, film and ...

. It is in the collection of the

Saint Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is an art museum located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. With paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from around the world, its three-story building stands in Forest Park in ...

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...

Description

octopus An octopus (: octopuses or octopodes) is a soft-bodied, eight-limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda (, ). The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttlefish, and nautiloids. Like oth ...

-like sea creature is painted in watercolor and pencil on a piece of cut paper. The creature stretches across the proper right side of the paper. The painting is signed on the verso: "Ellen Gallagher 2002".

Background

The painting is a part of a series, titled ''Water Ecstatic Series'', which Gallagher describes as being a type of

scrimshaw Scrimshaw is scrollwork, engravings, and carvings done in bone or ivory. Typically it refers to the artwork created by whalers, engraved on the byproducts of whales, such as bones or cartilage. It is most commonly made out of the bones and te ...

History

The painting was purchased by the Saint Louis Art Museum on May 23, 2003, from the artist via

Gagosian Gallery The Gagosian Gallery is a modern and contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. As of 2024, Gagosian employs 300 people at 19 exhibiti ...

in New York City. Funding to purchase the painting came from the Henry L. and Natalie Edison Freund Charitable Trust. ''Watery Ecstatic'' was featured in a solo exhibition about Gallagher at the Saint Louis Art Museum, titled ''Currents 88: Ellen Gallagher'', in 2003. The work also toured Europe as part of another solo show of Gallagher's work, "Ellen Gallagher: AxME," which visited the

Sara Hildén Art Museum Sara may refer to: People * Sara (given name), a feminine given name People with the given name * Sara Aboobacker (1936–2023), Indian writer and translator * Sara Ahmed (born 1969), British-Australian writer * Sara Allgood (1880–1950), Ir ...

Tate Modern Tate Modern is an art gallery in London, housing the United Kingdom's national collection of international Modern art, modern and contemporary art (created from or after 1900). It forms part of the Tate group together with Tate Britain, Tate Live ...

, and

Haus der Kunst The ''Haus der Kunst'' (, ''House of Art'') is a museum for modern and contemporary art in Munich, Bavaria. It is located at Prinzregentenstraße 1 at the southern edge of the Englischer Garten, Munich's largest park. It was built between 1933 an ...

References

2003 paintings Paintings by Ellen Gallagher {{21C-painting-stub