About

Award winning second career Artist and Jeweller Ella Fearon-Low plunders the visual larder of the past to create delicious contemporary artworks.  Her creative practice is deeply intuitive and draws on a lifetime immersing herself in active and passive visual research.  Influenced by architectural details, and decorative and domestic objects, her original creations are layered from influences as varied as South Asian rooftops and doorways, 17th Century glassware, Roman jewellery and Post-modern architectural detailing.  Finished works contain the patterns, symbols, forms and colours that that have seeped into her memory banks; synthesising vast tracts of design/art history into contemporary works that signal familiar tropes from across continents and centuries in a language that is fresh and celebratory.   Ella’s practice has developed to incorporate sculpture, installation, curation and writing alongside jewellery.

“I have always been obsessed with the decorative details of life which I collect on a daily basis. Sketches, photos and memories of these details gather in a vast visual library and form the basis of my designs. I use this information to layer multiple visual and cultural sources to create new shapes that are both fresh and familiar.  For example, my collection ‘Aquifolium Sequence’ fused post-modern architectural details with Edwardian design sensibilities in a striking linear collection. 

Using different materials is key to my practice and all hold equal potential and value for me.  I enjoy the conversation between them, often pairing precious and non-precious or exploring the interplay and balance between surface finishes.   The materials I use often hold narratives of their own.  As well as recycled metals I collect (some may say hoard) off-cuts and bin ends of unusual colours of Lucite, pieces of wood, vintage beads, stones and pearls, boxes of carefully categorised beach finds and all sorts of other unusual objects that are awaiting the right project to realise their potential. 

I make my work by hand using traditional techniques.  I believe there is a unique quality that comes from the relationship between hand and eye in making. A refined balance and a softness that industrial techniques cannot replicate; a perfect imperfection.  I am passionate about the details that give each piece its energy - the soft line of a hand carved form, the twinkle of a hammered rivet against the smooth Lucite, the tone and lustre of each componant as it relates to a finished piece.   

There is a eureka moment when the visual layers in my head and the making in my hands converge, it is in that moment that my unique voice is sewn into a new work, whatever the scale or material.”

To Read more about Ella and her practice - click here.