Elle created the the Third Eye of the Storm series during a mentorship program with artist and teacher Connie Solera. After completing the first PAINT FEARLESS mentorship in 2022, Elle joined the intensive BODY OF WORK cohort in 2023, and again in 2024, where she worked alongside other artists creating the work that came directly from their artists’ souls.

This series is part of a group exhibition hosted by Connie Solera which runs from June 7 through August 7, 2024

Elle received a professional development grant to pay for a portion of her mentorship fee. This project is supported in part by a grant from the North Dakota Council on the Arts, which receives funding from the state legislature and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Water is rife with tension; it is the source of creation and destruction. The literary canon is filled with characters who tangle with the power of water and its gods: from Odysseus and Prospero, to the films of James Cameron and Hayao Miyazaki.

This series began as a meditation on my fear of drowning; I began working while watching a gender-bent adaptation of The Tempest starring Helen Mirren as Prospera. The primary relationship of the play suddenly mother-daughter, I was thrust into an unexpected tempest of my own, processing my evolving relationship as my mother’s caregiver after years of navigating this stormy relationship.

Water is the source of life; so, too, our mothers. The ocean’s dance with the moon is one that has been worshiped and celebrated through ritual and art for millennia. That tension – the pull between the ocean and the moon, between life and death, creation and destruction, mothers and their children, vengeance and love–is the source of this body of work.

My name is Elle Billing; I am an artist, caregiver, and educator.

Making art is how I filter a continuous stream of information, through the particular lens of my queer disabled bodymind.

I create paintings through an iterative process I call Spiritual Archaeology. I layer my personal experiences between literary influences and contemporary media, using mixed media and bold marks. My influences stack up on a common theme, and as I scrape back what I have layered, I am able to excavate a singular truth about my Self and my place in the world.

The materials I am most excited by are vintage books, acrylic paint, all manner of pastels, and compelling songwriter-vocalists.

I am deeply drawn to surrealism, artistic tension, the multiverse, and alternate timelines. In the studio you will find me deconstructing old books, making my own collage paper, and infusing my work with the power of story.

The Tempest

The Tempest (2010, film), starring Helen Mirren

How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (2015 album), by Florence + the Machine

“What the Water Gave Me” (2011, song) by Florence + the Machine

What the Water Gave Me (1938), painting by Frida Kahlo

“Never Let Me Go” (2011, song) by Florence + the Machine

“Wooden Heart” (2010, song), by Listener

Fallen, 20th Anniversary Remastered Edition, (2023 album), by Evanescence

Hello Hurricane (2009 album), by Switchfoot

brother, sister (2006 album), by mewithoutYou

The Little Mermaid (2023 film)

Ponyo (2008, film) with English subtitles

The Abyss (1989, film)

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986, film)