(Press Release)

The Bell County Museum will open a new exhibition, Visioning Beauty: An Ella Mewhinney Retrospective, on Saturday, November 1, 2008, at noon. The exhibition will be the first retrospective of this talented and prolific Bell County artist since 1995. The exhibit will run through January 31, 2009.

Ella Koepke was born 1891 and grew up in Bartlett. She graduated from Texas Presbyterian College in Milford, in 1910. She studied with many of the country’s great art teachers, including Randall Davey and Robert Reid. In 1913, she married Logan Mewhinney and moved to Holland, Texas, where she and her husband raised two children. Despite her young and active family, Ella managed to continue her artistic pursuits and studies, and was the recipient of numerous prizes and awards.

Her beautiful painting, “Under Texas Skies,” was the centerpiece painting of the Texas exhibit at the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition in 1933. She died in 1975 and is buried in Bartlett.

Ella’s paintings, mostly in oil, are characterized by a strong sense of composition, her extraordinary sense of color, and strong linear forms. Although her travels to Colorado and New England produced landscapes from those regions, it is her landscapes of Texas as well as her still lifes that are the most well-known. The exhibit will feature approximately 40 paintings and watercolors of Ella Mewhinney, as well as other artifacts that belonged to the artist.

An opening reception and gallery talk will be held from 2 until 4 p.m. Michael Grauer, curator of art at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum and essayist for the Mewhinney exhibit, will be the guest speaker.

The museum is located at 201 N. Main Street in Belton. Hours are noon until 5:00 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.