Adjunct Art Professor Yvette Gellis always knew she was going to be an artist.
Today, her notable art exhibitions and residencies can be found all over the world in Taiwan, France and Austria, as well as locally at the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica. She has been teaching at Pepperdine since Summer 2014 with classes in printmaking, art fundamentals, painting and observational drawing as well as a first-year seminar.
A defining moment in Gellis’ career came when she decided to pursue her master’s degree after taking some time to care for her young children. She began to reject the constant negative thoughts she was having about her future and replaced them with positive visual manifestations of what she wanted her life to look like, which shifted her dreams to reality.
“Two weeks after I graduated, I walked into a major-name gallery in L.A., and I saw the exact vision that I visualized for two years,” Gellis said. “It was a big white gallery with my big white paintings. And it was proof, you know, that you have to work at it, visualize what you want and we are the ones who limit ourselves.”
Gellis’ success came with challenges and years of learning about art from every angle. Since beginning her career, Gellis found every way to take her talents to the next level.
Early years as an artist
Gellis grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and her ambition to master her craft led her to many opportunities as a young artist after she finished her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Dekalb. Gellis then worked at a commercial art studio where she learned to do realistic designs and airbrushing.
A quest to find her own style led her to New York City to attend illustrators’ workshops, where she learned from some of the greats such as Bernie Fuchs and Mark English.
“You really need to trust yourself,” Gellis said. “You can learn by what others are doing, … but in the end, you really want to find your own voice.”
She went back home to Chicago and got a job at ABC-TV making news graphics under quick deadlines, which Gellis said was very exciting.
As a painter, Gellis does a lot of abstract and nature-inspired pieces with her signature whimsical brush stroke, but she said she is not tied to one style of art. She also said her work is about pushing the boundaries and creating pieces that others can interact with in fresh and exciting ways, such as through a transformation of an entire room with art extending from the walls to the floor.
“As we also grow individually and spiritually, I have come to realize this interconnectedness,” Gellis said. “This sort of world soul if you will, and individual souls, that is all connected and so that has a big play in my work.”
Gellis said she would describe herself as an L.A.-made artist because her most impactful training came from attending UCLA, Art Center College of Design and Claremont Graduate University to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree.
Coming to Pepperdine
Ty Pownall, associate professor of studio art at Pepperdine, met Gellis at Claremont Graduate University in 2006 and later put her name in for an open position to teach an art fundamentals course at Pepperdine. A few years after graduating, Gellis invited him to join an exhibition, which Artillery profiled, that she had been working on at Jason Vass, an art gallery in Downtown Los Angeles.
“That’s a very unusual thing for an artist to work to get a solo show, a show that’s just a one-person show, to do all that work and then to — for no other reason than maybe you like that person and you like their art — bring in someone else into the show that you worked so hard to secure,” Pownall said. “I think it says a lot about her that she would be that generous.”
Pownall said he would describe Gellis’ art as ethereal, dreamy and spiritual. He said hard work does not scare her but rather energizes her, and that inspires him.
Gellis’ kind-heartedness has also touched many students at Pepperdine.
Before the Fall 2020 semester, she agreed to teach a first-year seminar if she could co-teach with a student. That day, she also got a message from a former student who was checking in to see how she was doing during the quarantine.
“She said that she felt it was just too coincidental to be anything other than the divine plan for me to have reached out on the same day that she had made that request to have a student to help her,” said Chase Johnson, a junior political science and communication major and president of the Student Government Association. “She asked me to help her, and I said of course because she is just such a wonderful soul.”
Johnson said Gellis wanted to find ways to support students through the difficulties of the pandemic, which resulted in him leading class check-ins. She also guided him through creating his own project for the class based around sustainability and the process of grading them.
“She was always wanting to see me grow, and it ended up kind of being her teaching me rather than me helping her, which I loved because she’s an excellent teacher in ways that you wouldn’t expect,” Johnson said.
Gellis did not always know she wanted to be a professor, but she said she found fulfillment in seeing students realize they could do things they previously thought were impossible.
Gellis said she hopes she teaches her students to embrace their ability to look within and believe that they can create whatever life they want for themselves.
“Trust yourself, really trust yourself,” Gellis said. “There is something different about you than anyone else, and that is the thing that really carries you.”
Liza Esquibias completed the reporting for this story under the supervision of Dr. Christina Littlefield.
