Ella Trott (b. 2001, Bristol), inhabits the past as a dream world. Built on stories told by her father and photographic relics of family history, she constructs notions of distant times and places with lyrical romanticism, resuscitating this space of longing and nostalgia through her work.

Each painting begins with a photograph. Usually retrieved from family archives, the images which speak to her are those most ripe for idealisation. Languid figures on sun-drenched sunbeds, laughing friends in pool-side bars, momentary records of a life she was not part of or cannot recall. Her technique is strikingly traditional yet distinctly her own. The canvas is first underpainted with a wash of burnt umber, then details are carefully carved out using rags and cotton, followed by the meticulous working-in of finer details and shadows. Some paintings are left at this stage, sepia hues speaking to a ghostly sense of passing time. Others are brought to life through a vivid polychromatic overpainting. Despite their photographic origin, Ella’s work remains profoundly painterly, energetic brushstrokes and palette knives leaving their mark on the canvas.

The conceptual fascination with the fragmentary quality of memory, the partial glimpse that ignites imagination, is at the heart of Ella’s practice. She explores what she terms ‘life-dysmorphia’, an unmissable dissatisfaction with one’s present state, a destructive belief that the object of one’s longing is inherently more desirable than the now. Despite their singular significance to Ella’s family archive, her paintings resonate universally. Through subtle abstraction, viewers often recognise something of themselves and their own pasts in these images. They become celebrations of the ubiquity of longing, explorations of the malleability of memory and a poignant response to the troubled relationship between representation and reality.

Ella Trott graduated with a first class degree in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2024.

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