Instagram story viewer> @ellenranson> Posts

Ellen Ranson

@ellenranson

1.9K

followers

3189

following

Painter 🎨 member of @paintbritain
DM me, open to commissions 🖼️
@strike_collective ✊
Durham Creative Community Fellow 2025
All views are my own

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Download All

Three years ago today, I graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Teesside University.

Looking back, it’s crazy to see how my own journey has become woven into Middlesbrough. Since graduating, I’ve worked as both a producer and a painter across the region, learning so much and meeting some amazing people. Last September, I found myself back in Boro, helping to produce and programme creative events in the place that helped shape me.

When I graduated I only hoped I would be part of something so exciting, and here we are! Spending time looking at where we’ve come from makes me even more excited about where we’re heading.

Middlesbrough has always been a place of community, graft, kindness and creativity. Here’s to celebrating our past, shaping our future, and backing the Boro for City of Culture 2029! 💚

#boroculture2029 taken in Middlesbrough, England by @ellenranson

122

11

3 months ago

Here we are with banner maker Ed Hall at the @durhamminersgala on Saturday. It was such a pleasure to meet him following the collaboration with Ed and Jeremy Deller for this year's limited edition print. We couldn't resist a photo in front of one of the banners they created.

In total, they made three banners - one specifically for the print, the full banner you see here, and the one for the iconic balcony at the County Hotel (pic 2) - all carrying this year's message.

They also became merch, and all of this helps raise funds for the Durham Miners Gala.

You can buy the time-limited edition print until 12 noon on Monday 13 July. Link in bio.

@jeremydeller
@ellenranson
@designbykinship by @ellenranson

343

3

3 months ago

Moments from the first #RedhillsVillage at the 140th @durhamminersgala ✌️#thefuturewebuild by @ellenranson

99

11

3 months ago

What a day #RedhillsVillage taken in Durham, Durham by @ellenranson

178

23

3 months ago

It takes a village ✌️ Day one of setup complete. See you in the morning for the big day @durhamminersgala taken in Durham by @ellenranson

131

10

3 months ago

Sneak peek 👀 Site dressing prep is well underway #RedhillsVillage taken in County Durham by @ellenranson

87

4

3 months ago

It’s been a strange year in many ways - lots of change and new adventures. I’ve been working on this painting across the year and looking back on the process of making this painting, I can really feel and see that change and transformation in the layers of the work, feels a little like a time capsule 💥🫟 taken in Newton Aycliffe by @ellenranson

104

13

4 months ago

Turned 30 in the most beautiful place with my ❤️

Drank too much wine, ate too much cheese, saw lots of art and pilgrimaged to the home of tiramisu 🇮🇹 taken in Venice, Italy by @ellenranson

138

19

5 months ago

Introducing our next new member @ellenranson

Ellen Ranson is an abstract painter, she lives and works in the North East of England. She received her MA at MIMA School of Art in 2022. She was the Paint Fellow at Northumbria University (2018), British Council Venice Fellow (2022), and was shortlisted for the Contemporary British Painting Prize in 2023. Exhibitions include: Abstract Vernacular: Continuing Conversations at Sugar House Island with Talking Sculpture Making in 2025, X Sunny Blunts, Revisiting Victor Pasmore’s Utopian Vision (in conjunction with the International Biennale of Non-Objective Art) in 2024.

“The physically powerful, expressive and emotionally charged works allow the artist’s emotions to transfer from body to canvas. A broad research base that includes feminist theory, mythology, memory, and landscape navigates the hallmarks of patriarchal art histories. Ranson subverts and intertwines these with references to feminine mythologies, everyday experience, and the often erased narratives of women throughout time. Creating distinctive paintings awash with motifs across culture, time and personal exploration.

Imagery is heavily abstracted through a handmade, labour intensive method that is seemingly digital in its output, whilst remaining tactile and embracing the gestural energy, layered colour, and urgency to interrogate the materials and processes of painting. Each painting becomes a constructed environment, a place where mythologies and material conversations converge and the tools and methods of painting serve as tools of excavation and reimagining.

Ranson’s paintings present us with heavily abstracted constructed environments in which painting reckons with and reimagines itself.” Ellen Ranson 2025

Images (details of):
1- Untitled (Marcello), Acrylic, spray paint, caulk and household paint on canvas 150 x 120cm, 2022
2- The Buried Moon, acrylic on board, 30 x 40cm, 2024
3- Wasteland, Acrylic, household paint and caulk on board, 40x30cm, 2024
4- sixteen sixty eight, Acrylic, household paint, and oil paint on canvas, 150 x 120cm, 2022

#ellenranson #painting #paintbritain #fridayfeature

Welcome Ellen! by @ellenranson

152

3

a year ago

Painting of the Day, #PaintBritain, The Buried Moon, Ellen Ranson, @ellenranson

Ellen is one of our newest members. Welcome to CBP Ellen! by @ellenranson

119

2

a year ago

128

27

a year ago

💥 Install day at Horden, the final leg of the County Durham run of GOING BACK BROCKENS.

It features a powerful sound installation built from archival recordings of Horden and East Durham residents, sharing their memories of life after the 1984–85 Miners’ Strike, which was then still raw in the collective memory.

The soundscape is joined by new paintings from award-winning artist Narbi Price, showing County Durham’s former colliery sites as they look today over 40 years since the last coal was mined. Together they explore themes surrounding the 1984 miners strike and its legacy in County Durham. Former pit villages have stories to tell, not just stories of their industrial past, but new stories of hope and aspiration.

Complementing the exhibition is a series of specially commissioned short films by Horden videographer Carl Joyce. Inspired by Mark Hudson’s book, each film explores the relationship between people and place, telling new and unique stories of those living in County Durham villages and how they continue to shape them.

Free entry - all welcome
Launch event: Friday August 22 - 5pm - 7pm
Then every day until August 31, 4pm - 5:30pm

📍St Mary’s Church, Blackhills Rd, Horden, SR8 4SD

@narbiprice @themarkhudson @coalfield_studios @nomorenowt @ellenranson taken in St Mary's Church, Horden by @ellenranson

74

0

a year ago