Ellen Ball 's background as a graphic designer and illustrator for the beauty industry influences her work as seen in her choices of imagery and application in her large-scale mixed media paintings. Ball begins her process with found or appropriated imagery that she photoshops, collages, layers, and draws upon, and then transfers onto a canvas to which she adds a rich assortment of media including oil paint, oil stick, reflective silver, lacquer, gold leaf, and textured and patterned paper to create a wholly original image. The result is a highly textural surface, ripe with visual tension and questions of interpretation. Her work is inspired by contemporary artistic influences such as Marilyn Minter, Christopher Wool and Elizabeth Peyton but also stretches back to Warhol, Matisse, ant the gold ground paintings of the early Renaissance.