He was employed on the Illinois Art Project of the WPA and was a founding member of the South Side Community Art Center, along with a number of younger black artists, including Margaret Burroughs, Eldzier Cortor, Gordon Parks, Charles Sebree, and Charles White.
Ellison is best known for intimately-scaled works that reveal the private lives and shared experiences of African Americans who moved to northern cities from the rural South between World War I and II.
[2] His most famous painting, Train Station,[3] held in the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts white people on one side of a station platform, identified as being in Macon, Georgia,[4] who are heading south for luxury holidays, with African Americans carrying their bags, and African Americans on the other side of the platform, carrying their own luggage, boarding a train for the North and a new start.
In an untitled painting created in 1937, Ellison depicts a well-made-up African American woman lying back in a beautician's chair with her eyes closed and her temples being massaged.
Only the beautician's hands are seen, with her fingernails featuring a "French manicure" – red centers with white moons and tips – a style that has obviously captivated the artist.