Ellie Walker

A recent graduate with an MA in Fine Art from City & Guilds of London Art School, Walker makes paintings that are emotive and process-driven, investigating the unknown through drawing and material experimentation. Uncertainty, failure and risk are central to Walker’s practice and are not only embraced, but are actively exploited, creating space for chance to disrupt habits and allow for unexpected forms to emerge. Walker’s inner world is first externalized onto the canvas through the act of drawing, which is then metamorphosed into expressive and gestural surfaces, formed through an intuitive response to mark-making, colour, and continually conversing with the unpredictable nature of paint as it begins to dictate its own direction. She scrapes back layers or draws into areas of wet paint with oil sticks, revealing earlier surfaces or building thicker, messy, textural ones. She works on unstretched canvas stapled to the wall or laid on the floor treating it like a drawing, flipping the works upside down, or sometimes tearing up new and old paintings, stitching them back together to juxtapose and transform into entirely different images. This process of layering, destruction and fragmentation keeps the work in a constant state of tension, playing with control, release and re-emergence, which helps her to detach from the pressure and expectations placed on herself to get to a final result. The act of making for her is cathartic, physical, and demanding, but also asks for moments of quiet and just being with the work. It is between these two opposing demands that moves her away from internal dialogue and noise of the outside world and back into the immediacy of her body. By engaging in the problem-solving inherent in the making, she reconnects with herself through the physicality of doing. Visual records of a conversation between the artist’s inner world and the tangible, physical process of making become documented, reflecting shifting, non-linear memories and experiences into emotional landscapes. The resulting works forge connections that are at once personal, separate, and universally shared.

London, Walthamstow

Past Exhibitions:

• 2018 — More and More and More’, Organhaus Gallery, Chongqing, China
• 2018 — ARTPIQ Summerhouse Residency, Dusseldorf, Germany
• 2019 — Rising Stars, RBA Rome Scholarship, Semi-Finalists, Royal Over-Seas League, London, UK
• 2022 — Headless, The Island, Bristol, UK
• 2024 — Locality, Blue Gates, Hackney Wick, London, UK
• 2025 - Reverie After Industry, Seeing Loud Gallery, Brixton, London, UK
• 2025 - MA Graduate Show, City & Guilds of London Art School, London, UK
• 2025 - Lido Open, (Guest curation by Sophie Von Hellermann), The Lido Stores, Margate, UK
• 2025 - Auto Amor Project Vol.2, The Art House, London, UK
• 2025 - Outsiders Arts Club, a quarterly night event with this month’s guest speaker, Gemma Rolls-Bentley. The Handbag Factory, London, UK

Education:

• 2025 — MA Fine Art - City and Guilds of London Art School
• 2024 — Turps Banana Correspondence Course
• 2017 — BA (Hons) Fine Art Painting – University of Brighton

Residencies:

• 2018 — ARTPIQ Summerhouse, Dusseldorf, Germany
• 2018 — Organhaus, Chongqing, China

Publications:

• 2019 — DATEAGLE ART
• 2018 — Artsy, ‘How Ellie Walker’s Paintings Lucidly Process and Disrupt Memory’
• 2018 — ARTMAZE, Issue 09
• 2018 — Friend of the Artist, Issue 05