Born into a music oriented family, David Ellis of the Bay Area, is influenced by a variety of sounds and active performances, is a performance, video and installation artist who creates canvases with "watery, gyrating swirls of paint." (Wolff) Often, while he is painting, he is being filmed going through the processes, which is dubbed "motion painting'. One of his stop-frame animations has about 25,000 shots condensed into an eight minute video.

Indeed his childhood music experiences seem to carry over into his creative work, which is an interpretation on canvas of music and sound. "Like jazz, these works provide Ellis with an opportunity to combine ideas with collaborators or work solo within a form that promotes improvi...