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Ella Walker (b. 1993, Manchester, UK) is a London-based British artist whose work combines traditional and contemporary painting techniques. Drawing from diverse sources—iconography, medieval manuscripts, classical sculpture, ballet, fashion, and Fellini and Pasolini’s cinema—Walker unifies historic and modern figures in a single visual plane.Walker’s paintings utilize light washes of acrylic dispersion, pigment, chalk, and marble dust on textured, absorbent surfaces. Drawing on fresco’s spatial logic, she constructs shallow stage-like scenes, blending ecstasy, eroticism, and suffering. Her refined line work and luminous qualities evoke Piero della Francesca, while architectural elements and costume designs recall Giorgio de Chirico. Walker centers female figures in ambiguous narratives that challenge traditional depictions of women in art history. Walker studied Painting and Printmaking at The Glasgow School of Art and earned a Postgraduate Diploma from The Royal Drawing School, London, in 2018. Her recent solo exhibitions include The Romance of the Rose at Pilar Corrias, London (2024), and Chorus at Kestner Gesellschaft, Hanover (2023). Group exhibitions include Present Tense at Hauser & Wirth Somerset (2024) and Bathing Nervous Limbs at Edinburgh Art Festival (2021). Through her work, Walker explores the complex interplay of pleasure and pain, placing the female form at the heart of her visual explorations.

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