Ella Carty (born 1971 in Nairobi, Kenya) studied BA Fine Art: Painting at Cheltenham College of Art 1990–94 and is an alumna of Digswell Arts in Hertfordshire (2010–14). She lives near Falmouth in Cornwall and has a studio at the Art Centre Penryn.
Ella is a painter who investigates her own experiences of the world. Her semi-abstract paintings incorporate a love of colour and pattern, absorbing and interpreting her surroundings. She treads a line between representation and abstraction with the aim of sparking the viewer’s curiosity and igniting their imagination.
Ella works predominantly with water-based acrylic ink on canvas, as this medium avoids using solvent-based substances like turps and white spirit that often go hand in hand with oil paints. She loves the colour intensity, fluidity and versatility of acrylic inks and the commitment to the mark that they bring. “Once the ink is applied, it is hard to eliminate or work over. It is a very different method of working to oils, where you can scrape paint off or continually re-work the surface of the painting.”
Ella’s work touches on the sensation of warmth as well as the seasonal change that comes at the end of summer and beginning of autumn. She uses colour to create imagined spaces, to set a scene or a narrative and to generate an emotional connection with the viewer.
“I like the idea of other possibilities underneath layers of pigment,” Ella says. “Liquid pools of cobalt blue stubbed out by crimson or layers of spectre grey. In this sense I come from a long line of painters obsessed with the physical materials and what they can do. It’s a seductive process. I rarely have a plan. I want to be surprised.”
Ella exhibits widely in the UK, including most recently in the group shows Ordinary Beauty at The Point Contemporary in Cromer, Norfolk (2025) and Don’t Play with Your Food at Sunny Bank Mills in Leeds (2024). Her work has been shown regularly at Morgans Gallery in Falmouth since 2021 (most recently in 2025), and with the Newlyn Society of Artists at Tremenheere Gallery in Penzance since 2020 (most recently in 2024). Solo shows include Rooms in Stones Café Krowji (Redruth, Cornwall) in 2022 and Drawing from Rocks and The Joy of Small Things both with The Terrace Gallery (Penryn, Cornwall) in 2021.
Ella has been represented several times at art fairs by Gala Fine Art, including at Battersea Affordable Art Fair Spring edition since 2022 and at Amsterdam Affordable Art Fair in November 2023 and October 2024. Ella’s paintings were a hit on our stand at Brussels Affordable Art Fair in February 2025 and we will be taking her work back there in 2026. We showed Ella’s work in our 10-year anniversary group exhibition, Gala Fine Art: 10 Year, 14 Artists, at The Coningsby Gallery, London, in autumn 2025.
Ella’s work is in private collections all over the world, including the US, Canada, Australia and the Far East, as well as the UK and Europe.
