Katy Ellis

Born in London to creative parents, father an architect and mother a painter and Illustrator, both with a love for the landscape and the arts, Katy was exposed to a childhood rich with experiences of the theatre, film exhibitions and nature. She would often carry a sketchbook with her and record her life through sketches of interiors, people, plants,fish or the outdoors.

Gaining a BA Hons in Painting, on graduating from Glasgow school of art she took up scholarships from the Royal Scottish Academy and a bursary from the Royal Institute of painters in watercolour to paint and travel through Italy, India, Thailand and Laos across 3 years. This was a wonderful opportunity  and experience. Filling reams of paper and sketchbooks, on her return she explored the images recorded further, producing paintings she went on to exhibit in various galleries in Scotland  and London.

She later moved from London, in search of a slower pace and more green, to settle in Saffron Walden and after beginning a family she began to miss that feeling of travelling and recording her experiences through photography, drawing and painting. After acquiring a dog, she discovered she could recapture a similar feeling through their walks, finding the many different little worlds and landscapes along the green lanes, waterways and forests locally to her in Cambridgeshire and Essex. After a memorable visit to the winter lights at Anglesey Abbey gardens many years ago, Katy found herself fascinated by the forms of trees with their tangled branches and knots.

She now particularly enjoys painting trees and exploring the various forms that trees adopt, the character and presence they have, finding it greatly soothing and balancing to walk among them. She will explore ideas through her walks, absorbing the feel of a place and recording images by photos and sketchbooks, returning home to collate these, along  with memory into a scene using layers of thin watercolour.