Ella Clocksin

The sounds of a stag crashing through undergrowth, a red kite bursting out of a tree, birdsong in ancient woodland, voices at an exhibition, blurred shopping mall echos, and improvised viola are sources for recent projects.

Listening has become as important as looking in my current practice and, fundamentally, I’m interested in the unfolding, provisional nature of
perception itself. By exploiting watercolour’s immediacy, I can mark fleeting sights and sounds before words arrive to name them, and find allusive forms for beauty, joy and solace in the poetics of lost detail.

Based in Oxford, I’ve been a professional artist and tutor for longer than anything else, after BA (hons, 1st) and MA Fine Art (distinction) from
Winchester School of Art (University of Southampton).

But with a cross-disciplinary background in literature and psychotherapy, my work is influenced by ancient mythologies, ideas about how we ‘know’ what we know, and psychotherapeutic understandings of what can and cannot be articulated.

In 2020 I received Arts Council England funding through The Jelly, Reading, for my Birdsong Perceptual Field project on the Twelve Artists At Home Residency. Studio residencies at Jelly and The Old Lock Up Gallery, Cromford followed.

Solo/duo exhibitions include ronapainting gallery and Templeton College (Oxford), The Old Fire Engine House Gallery and the Wall Gallery (Ely), and
Rookley Manor Studio Gallery (Isle of Wight). Selected group exhibitions include Royal Watercolour Society, Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, art_house_life (Ventor), Bath Society of Artists Open, The Old Lock Up Gallery (Cromford), Frickleton Fine Art (Kingshill), Irving Gallery (Oxford), and Darle and the Bear (Woodstock).

My work is held in UK university, hospital and school collections, and private collections in the UK, USA, Canada, France and Australia.

Formerly Visiting Lecturer in Life Drawing at Winchester School of Art and Visual Arts Therapist at The School of Life, London, I have written critical texts for artists’ exhibition catalogues, run my own programmes of art workshops for twenty-five years, and tutored for Arts en Provence, Lund Studios (York) and the Oxford Summer School.