Four years ago, I picked up a paintbrush again. Not just to make art — but to process, to understand, to breathe.

Two years before that, my son had arrived early — 10 weeks early, in fact. He spent 6 weeks in NICU, and he was very poorly. In the months leading up to his birth, I’d been in and out of hospital with complications from grade 4 placenta previa. The placenta had grown to completely cover my cervix, and it meant constant bleeding and uncertainty. We had to take each minute as it came, never daring to look ahead in case the worst happened.

We were lucky. He’s now an inquisitive, full-of-energy six-year-old. But that period (oh, and did I mention he was IVF?) was unbelievably hard. Once he was home, we were thrown into caring for a newborn with additional needs. There was no space to process. No time to breathe. We just had to get on with it.

We’d relocated from London to Norwich while I was undergoing IVF — closer to family, but further from everything familiar. I left my job because I couldn’t handle the commute, the work, the relocation, and the health issues all at once. I naively thought I’d just pick it all back up once I had him.

But when I tried to re-enter the workplace, there were no flexible jobs. My son was developmentally behind — understandably — and I couldn’t find part-time work nearby. I was exhausted, frustrated… and furious. Furious that after everything, the system still wasn’t designed to support mothers like me.

We’d just finished renovating our house, and as I began buying art for our new walls, I thought: Maybe I could do this. So I started creating digital prints — bold, raw, a little angry — to celebrate and spotlight the power of women. It was the start of a quiet rebellion.

Some of you reading this might even remember those early prints. They were affordable (too affordable to make it a dependable income), but they gave me an outlet — a way to speak out. But after a while, I started to feel drained by screens. Something in me craved the mess, the texture, the instinct of physical materials. I missed the visceral pull of painting. So I bought a few supplies and started to play.

It didn’t take long. I was hooked.

I stopped making digital work entirely and threw myself into painting. A good friend, Jenni Murphy, kindly introduced me to a gallery owner, Elizabeth of Prince & Pilgrim. She took six of my pieces — and they sold within weeks. I made another six. They sold too.

From there, everything grew. I became more focused, more determined to prove myself as a painter. I began refining my style, leaning into realism, trying to master the figure. But no matter how much I evolved, one thing remained constant: I kept painting women.

Women who were processing. Women who weren’t particularly pretty or posed. Women who looked like they’d just been through it. Sadness. Strength. Sarcasm. Stillness. I started to realise I was telling my own story through them.

At first, I worked from online references. But eventually I craved something more personal — more curated. I started painting women I knew. We’d speak before I photographed them, often about something they were going through. I’d try to capture that moment in their face, then interpret it in the painting — not just in the portrait, but in the composition, the colours, the abstract shapes that started creeping in. That looseness became essential to me. It scratched a different itch.

Then I had my daughter.

It took another 2–3 years of trying, and like her brother, she arrived in dramatic fashion — 9 weeks early, emergency C-section. Back in the NICU. Back in the place I thought I’d left behind. But again, we are so lucky. She’s here. She’s fierce. She’s thriving.

In the time since, I’ve painted more self-portraits — perhaps subconsciously trying to process the trauma that never quite found its place.

And I’ve had setbacks. One in particular this year hit me hard. It knocked me in a way I wasn’t expecting. I spiralled a little, trying to understand why I was taking it so personally. Why it felt so tied to who I was.

So I asked myself: Why do I paint?

And I realised that somewhere, in focusing so much on individual stories, my own had caught up with me. The grief, the anger, the resilience. It was all coming out on canvas. I’ve painted women to understand myself. To figure out what I’m doing here, in this studio in Norwich, trying to make sense of it all.

And through that, I’ve met the most incredible people — collectors, curators, strangers — who have stood in front of my work and said, “I feel that.” Those connections have meant everything.

But now, something is shifting.

There’s a nudge I can’t ignore — the kind you feel in your gut before your head catches up. My work has always been rooted in honesty, and honestly… I’m ready for something new.

I don’t know exactly what that is, and that’s okay. I think it means exploring more of the environments we find ourselves in. I think it means loosening up, being less precious, letting emotion lead the way. Not worrying so much about whether it looks “right,” or even if it looks like a person — because maybe the feeling will say enough.

I’m not walking away from painting women. But I might be looking at them — at us — through a wider lens. With more play, more abstraction, more space. I want to experiment. To be uncomfortable. To not know, for a while.

This recent studio sale felt like a punctuation mark. Not a full stop, but a comma. A breath. A moment to take stock before moving forward.

If you’ve bought my work, shared it, messaged, commented, or even just quietly followed along — thank you. I’ve felt that support. And I’ve needed it.

I’ll keep sharing as I go. But for now, I’m letting the dust settle. Letting myself listen. And trusting that the next chapter will show itself, as long as I stay open.

Here’s to whatever’s waiting around the corner.

— Ellis x

Insert Comma