Ellie Kaufmann

Contemporary Streetscape Painting

Ellie Kaufmann is a painter based in Captains Flat, New South Wales. Ellie’s artworks reflect everyday, mundane life, exploring the theme of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. Her works celebrate stockpiled suburbia, maximalist interiors, outdated exteriors, meaningless collections, fantastic trash and objects that are no longer useful but kept for aesthetic or nostalgic reasons.

Documenting snippets of her life and neighbourhood, Ellie is drawn to objects and environments that sit between being wanted and unwanted. More recently, this interest has extended to Facebook Marketplace and the quirky, everyday images created by people photographing their possessions for sale. Her work also investigates the light and colours within her residential domain and can be described as Australiana with kitsch and pop art references.

Ellie earned a Diploma of Fine Arts from Newcastle Art School in 2011. Since then she has exhibited across Australia, including at Newcastle Regional Gallery and Wollongong Art Gallery. She has twice been awarded the Painting Prize at the Newcastle Emerging Art Prize, in 2015 and 2016, and was highly commended in the 2024 Gosford Art Prize.