Appearing first as a monochromatic and abstract field, Shudder Home Refuge slowly reveals a scene of contrasts: humor and terror, violence and desire, reactions and interactions, fantastical landscape and urban decay. Ellis’ paintings often feature a rotating cast of fiends, ghouls, cartoons, and nymphs in abstract and disorienting settings. These archetypes make us question power and innocence. As characters toy with sexual charge and deviance, they remain tethered to the race and gender politics of our present day. In Shudder Home Refuge, Ellis intervenes in the 19th-century tradition of landscape painting, and instead shows the clash and conflict of projected fantasies and desires.