The paintings that she creates are her interpretation of not what she sees outside but what she feels...
Ellis O'Connor is a contemporary landscape artist from Scotland who graduated with a Master's degree in Fine Art from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design in 2015. Her work interprets not just what she sees in the environment around her, but what she feels - capturing the energy, atmosphere, and fleeting moments of elemental weather through expressive and gestural painting. Ellis creates evocative landscapes using mixed materials and various tools, inviting viewers to connect with the power and emotion of the natural world through her art.
Ellis O'Connor's Arctic Explorations
After completing her education, Ellis embarked on several significant artistic journeys that have shaped her creative vision. In 2022, she was one of just ten artists worldwide selected for the annual Arctic Circle Expedition, where she circumnavigated the archipelago of Svalbard in the High Arctic. This experience followed earlier arctic explorations, including a 2016 expedition to Svalbard as a selected worldwide artist. These immersive experiences in extreme environments have deeply influenced her approach to landscape painting, allowing her to create work that captures the raw energy of wild places.
From Skye to the World
For the past seven years, Ellis has worked as a full-time artist, living and working from her home studio on the Isle of Skye where she draws direct inspiration from the surrounding landscape. Her practice often involves creating artwork on site, where extreme weather and natural elements become integral to her pieces - a process she describes as almost "performative." Ellis exhibits her paintings widely through numerous gallery representations across Scotland and beyond.
Recognition and Artistic Impact
Ellis O'Connor's distinctive artistic vision has earned her numerous accolades throughout her career, including the John Byrne Award, the Royal Scottish Academy Landscape Award, and the Royal Scottish Academy John Kinross Florence Scholarship. Her work has been featured in prestigious collaborations with brands like Talisker, Innis and Gunn, and National Geographic. Through her large-scale, expressive oil paintings, Ellis creates a dialogue between external landscapes and internal emotional states, stripping away recognizable forms to invite viewers to engage with the raw energy that nature evokes. Her paintings serve as a testament to the powerful connection between artist and environment, capturing moments where the boundaries between self and landscape blur.