Design Your Life!
Ella Balkwill
Artist, Designer, Energetic Modalities, Empath
The passion to create has been my motivation throughout my childhood and education, interior design career and now as an artist. It lets me breathe.
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.”
-Edgar Degas
Ella Balkwill, originally from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, now resides near Paris, Ontario. She has studied at the Guelph School of Art, Alton Mills Arts Centre, and the Elora Centre for the Arts.
Ella’s creative roots began as a teenager when she designed, and created, her own clothing. This evolved into drapery making and eventually became a successful interior design business. Now, reunited with her passion, Ella concentrates on creating art which speaks to her soul. She skirted the draw of acrylic in search of a more natural, intuitive outlet to her unquenchable curiosity. Her outlet was found in oil and cold wax medium - with much of her inspiration coming from nature.
Ella finds herself creating layers, overlapping and scraping, revealing interesting and beautiful combinations of glorious colour and texture - somewhat the way a sunset ebbs and flows through the setting sun. Because of the variety of texture and layers, and the technique of letting previous layers and textures show through the surface, paintings done in this medium are naturally rich in complexity. Ella creates marks, textures, and shapes, taking the complexity and editing it down until what remains is strictly the essential. The simplest of compositions sing with underlying intricacy and passion.
“My creative process mirrors life. We usually live through complex periods of change and emotion before we can begin to embrace our own art of living.”
Ella’s body of Abstract Expressionism is created to effect peace and calm, to inspire and heal. Each piece starts with an inspirational word which is the underlying life of the final creation. Cold wax is enticingly organic, tactile, and invites our touch.