ELLA MCVEIGH

About Ella

Ella McVeigh (b. 1992 United Kingdom) has created a strong body of experimental work which lingers between the figurative and the abstract. Her intricate works feel like ancient reliefs of foliage and shapes steeped with an uncanny sensation. Her practice comes from a desire to depict chaos and order as a unified state and is based on a combination of drawings and visual ideas. Through a daily routine of drawing, she builds on disparate concepts and notions until they feel complete. Taking inspiration from widespread sources in her immediate environment and bolstered by books on natural history and topography, she has created an idiosyncratic oeuvre which is always in motion.

Ella’s paintings are webbed with art history, the role of nature in art-making, and the possibilities and meaning of painting today. Starting primarily from found imagery of the natural world, she explores painting as a mental performance of visual decision-making. These images are taken from an array of sources, ranging from studio shots of flower arrangements to encyclopaedias on minerals and geology. McVeigh selects, articulates, and in some way binds up what she has grasped in the exterior world and pairs it with her own interior world. She sees in abstract painting vast potential for exploration on a material, and uses amorphous structures and intense colour planes to probe the limits of coherent image formation.

In her enigmatic paintings, we experience the presence of the exterior world as well as the transformation of all sensory experiences into imagery of new morphologies. Whereas most artists practice through preliminary studies, she constructs and deconstructs directly onto the canvas, seemingly building on old ruins.

Education

2018 - 2020 - Royal College of Art, London - MA Painting

2014 - Wimbledon College of Arts, London - BA Painting

2011 - Byam Shaw UAL, London - Foundation Fine Arts

Awards

2020 - Chadwell Award Winner

Selected Exhibitions

2021 - Newchild Gallery - Wild Blue Yonder

2020 - Fold Gallery - 50/50

2020 - Josh Lilley - Beacon (online)

2020 - Tomorrow London - Whitecube Gallery

2020 - Unit 1 Workshop - Final not Over

2019 - Royal College of Art - WIP Show

Work in collections

University of the Arts London Art Collection

Why we like it

• Represented alongside very promising artists 

• Younger than her most immediate peers

• Early career Whitecube show

• Works have been placed with a Belgian foundation, and significant collections in Italy, China, UK and US (from her last exhibition with Newchild)

• Unique creative process

• Meaningful symbolism around regeneration and the ability to evolve stronger in an environment that exists largely outside of our control

What others are saying

• "Abstract Choreographer, Ella McVeigh", Jardin d'Ecriture, December 2021

What’s included

• The value of the artwork (£4,900 incl. VAT) 

• Collection, crating and shipping (£1,200 incl. VAT)

• Condition report and photography (£350 incl. VAT)

• 5% Admin Fee (£300 incl. VAT)

• Insurance and storage (covered by NAAC)