Ellen Levine Dodd currently creates art full time and teaches art workshops, group and private lessons in her studio – artNovato – in Downtown Novato. She lives with her husband in Bel Marin Keyes in Novato. She was born in Massachusetts and grew up in Winthrop, a small New England beach town near Boston. She has been painting, doing photography, and printing since early childhood. She attended Clark University on an art scholarship and studied painting at the Worcester Art Museum school and photography at the Worcester Craft Center. During her junior year at Clark she took a year and traveled to Europe and the Middle East doing photography and studying cultural diversity. When she returned to the United States she attended Massachusetts College of Art studying photography and printmaking. After further travels she moved to California and graduated from Sonoma State University on the National Dean’s List with a BA in Fine Art. and a double major in painting and photography. My work is oil and cold wax with mixed media. The under layers are often painted with acrylic and gesso, using mark making materials of graphite, colored pencils, Prismacolor, and wax art crayons. They are overpainted with oil and cold wax, oil glazes, oilsticks, oil pastels, graphite, charcoal and wax art crayons.