Ellis O'Connor: 2014 Scholar

  • How did the experience affect you as an individual? It gave me an opportunity to challenge and develop my art...
    Ellis O'Connor, Untitled 4, mixed media on board 2014. RSA Collection.

    How did the experience affect you as an individual?

    It gave me an opportunity to challenge and develop my art practice, the support and space to make new work at a critical time when I had just graduated and also a chance to expand my ideas in a new environment which was key to my development as an artist.

     

    What was the impact on your practice?

    It challenged my ideas of landscape art when I was in Florence, it developed the integral meanings behind my work and because of the unlimited amount of visual inspiration on offer there, I was able to gain a vast amount of knowledge on painting techniques, art history and creative inspiration that has fuelled my art practise ever since.
  • What would you say the long term impact has been on yourself and you work? It gave me the confidence...
    Ellis O'Connor, Frontier, oil on canvas 2019.

    What would you say the long term impact has been on yourself and you work?

    It gave me the confidence as a young freshly graduated 22 year old to really ‘feel’ like a proper artist, it was the first project since I left the art school and it gave me that break at a time when everything was uncertain and I wasn’t sure how to approach the development of my work.

    This confidence has continued on into my career and the visual inspiration that I gained in Florence still flows into my work now, the palettes, the painting techniques and the connections I made.
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