Just a one-hour commute away from Liverpool Street station, artist Ellie Walker picks me up in a friendly town where sea, silence, and seals are the background noises when working at her studio (along with her dog’s barks). Her studio, which is where she has been painting for the past year, is situated in a room in Walker’s parents’ house in Burham-on-Crouch, Essex, in the East Coast of England. She moved back home after finishing her degree in Brighton, and I arrive to find that the artist has thoroughly enjoyed not having to share a studio space with anyone during this year. “It’s nice being able to be as messy and disorganised as I want to be”, Walker mentions, “it’s also really pleasant not to feel self-conscious about my work, especially when I’m trying out something new, and it’s turning out awful.” One thing I learned from her is that working in an isolated studio space has both its pro’s and con’s. It’s very easy for her to lose herself in her work if she’s left alone with it for too long: it’s lonely. And as an emerging artist, she finds herself missing out on so many important aspects of having other artists around, but it has also been a completely freeing and liberating experience to enjoy the process of letting the work go terribly wrong and not giving herself such a hard time if for it.
