Ellen Elmes has relished the practice of watercolor and mural painting as her vehicles of self-expression for fifty years plus, ever grateful for creative journeys with her husband Don and for the inspiration of living in the Appalachian Mountains. She exhibits her watercolors in Southwest Virginia and numerous Mid-Atlantic states. Her murals, some community-created, grace walls in Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Scotland. Recent works include her Johnson City TN mural, Passing the Torch, a 2020 Centennial Celebration of the passage of the 19th Amendment; and 23 individual portraits, A Tribute to Beloved Lives, remembering the Mexican and Mexican Americans killed in the El Paso Walmart massacre in 2019. Ellen is an experienced community college and Common Ground teacher. Her book, Appalachian Labyrinth: Painting to the Center, is a memoir of her journey as a rural artist.