Mary Anne Aytoun Ellis

Mary Anne Aytoun Ellis is a British artist whose work is deeply rooted in the natural world, drawing particular inspiration from the fields, woods, and hedgerows surrounding her home. Her practice is grounded in a close, sustained engagement with the landscape, shaped as much by personal experience as by a generational connection to the land.

Working in egg tempera, Ellis employs a highly individual and intricate technique, mixing her own pigments and building surfaces through numerous layers and glazes. These are interwoven with passages of detailed pencil drawing, watercolour, and pen and ink, resulting in works where process and subject are inseparable. The way each painting is made is fundamentally bound to what it seeks to express.

Her compositions emerge gradually from loose, abstract beginnings, without predetermined structure or imagery. Guided intuitively by the marks that surface, Ellis allows the landscape to reveal itself through the process of making. This approach forms a deeply personal “way in,” where materials, gesture, and subject develop in tandem, rooted in impression rather than direct representation.