Ella Baudinet paints at the edge of realism. In her large-scale oil paintings, precise observation gives way to fluidity, as figures emerge from fields of colour and light only to dissolve back into them. The result is a body of work in which atmosphere and form remain in constant negotiation.
Born in Melbourne and raised on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, Baudinet spent her childhood between the mountains and the sea. She began painting in oils at the age of eight, encouraged by her grandmother, who introduced her to an artist that urged her to adopt the medium as early as possible. By her teenage years she had developed a strong grounding in realism and photorealism, a discipline she would push to its limits before looking beyond it.
That search for a less prescribed visual language brought her into direct tension with the environment she encountered at art school, where work rooted in beauty, figuration, and traditional craft often sat at odds with prevailing institutional preferences. She continued regardless, with a determination she has traced in part to watching her father, a creative who set his work aside when family life took over, and her refusal to let the same happen to her. It was during this period, in 2014, that she had a clear vision of what her future work would look like, a specific combination of abstraction, surrealism, and realism that became a compass she has followed ever since.
After completing her BA in Fine Art in 2015, she set about reaching that vision. The process was deliberate and patient. In the years immediately after graduation she stripped her palette back almost entirely, working in black and white as a way of isolating the essentials, before reintroducing colour and complexity. By 2019 she had begun incorporating digital tools, primarily Photoshop, into her process. Compositions that had previously been worked out on canvas were now resolved digitally first, giving her a structural clarity that the final painted surface could then interpret and build upon. The painted surface itself is constructed through layering, glazing, and careful blending across often monumental canvases. Decisions about paint thickness, the transparency of glazes, and the adjustment of edges are made directly in the studio, giving the work a sense of accumulated time and material presence that photography rarely captures.
But it was not until a deepening meditation practice took hold from 2021 onward that the work found its clearest direction. Compositions that had previously been purely atmospheric began to admit figures, their forms drawn from Renaissance and Baroque references she has consistently returned to across her practice, an acknowledgement, in her own words, of the old masters and the level of craft they brought to the medium. By 2023 that direction had consolidated into the body of work that defines her output today.
Baudinet relocated to London in early 2024 and has since presented solo exhibitions at The ARX in Knightsbridge and at S Gallery in Madrid, Embodied Visions in 2023 and Expansion in 2025. Her paintings are held in private collections across Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Spain. Across her practice, she has consistently pushed back against the contemporary tendency toward discomfort and provocation, arguing that beauty and emotional depth are serious and legitimate artistic aims, a conviction that shows no sign of softening.
In conversation with The Exclusivist, Baudinet discusses the forces that have shaped her practice, her experience of formal art education, and the directions she is now pursuing.
Q&A with Ella Baudinet
The Quiet Evolution of a Practice
You’ve described how meditation has opened up new possibilities in your work from around 2021 onwards. In the early stages of that shift, did it feel like a clear turning point, or more like a gradual evolution? And has the way it feeds into your paintings continued to surprise you, or has it become more intuitive over time?
Meditation intertwined with my art practice pretty organically, without me really realising its impact at the time. The beginning of my meditation practice started around the same time as my art career. Back then, I didn’t really know how to meditate; sitting with myself felt healing enough, so I continued to do it.
There were a couple of shifts that happened around 2021. The first was that I began reading books about spiritual philosophy, mysticism, mindfulness and meditation. These teachings helped me view thoughts and the human brain in a completely different way, in particular The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I learned to practise mind-stilling meditations that created a huge amount of mental space, which I found benefited my creativity significantly.
The second shift was around the time I visited a psychic medium for the first time, which ripped open a channel to spirituality and unknowingly influenced the following few years of art.
Inner States
You’ve mentioned that your meditation practice continues to shape your work, with paintings now emerging from meditative visions. Do you need to be in a particular state of mind to paint, or do you use meditation to enter one? When you look back at your strongest works, do you see them as linked to specific states of mind?
For me, meditation went from being a practice of clearing the mind to a sacred space for creative and spiritual work. I began to see visions of paintings while meditating; different colours and compositions would form in my mind, and I’d observe loose imagery of potential artworks. These visions formed the basis for the following paintings.
Meditation itself isn’t a woo-woo or inherently spiritual thing — it’s scientifically shown to improve focus, mood, concentration and creativity, all things that are hugely beneficial for artists. I use it as a tool to optimise my workflow alongside the spiritual aspects. If you look back at my work year by year, you can observe a clear shift from 2021 onwards. The artworks are infused with more ethereal beauty over time, once I’d discovered this new way of working. Alongside meditation, technology has allowed me to accelerate my work in ways I never would have imagined. I take these meditative visions into Adobe Photoshop and create digital references for the final physically painted work. This process has allowed me to streamline new artworks and create a secure place to work from while trying to bring visions into existence.
From Digital Structure to Painted Form
How closely do your finished paintings follow your initial digital sketches, and does the final work ever diverge significantly?
The paintings are just about identical to the references. I was a photorealist painter a long time ago, which has helped. At least, this has been my process until now — I’m currently focusing more on an experimental approach.
Art Education and Shifting Priorities
You described how, during your art education, beauty and more traditional approaches were often dismissed or even ridiculed. How did that environment shape your view of formal art education, which should ideally nurture personal expression rather than enforce a narrow aesthetic ideology?
I had no idea about conceptual art growing up. In my household, we had some books on the old masters that I would often look through. We would visit the occasional museum or gallery filled with traditional and modernist works, and I always admired the beauty and skilled craftsmanship of the old masters. So, of course, when I started art school, most contemporary art came as a bit of a shock. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the school had allowed students to follow the direction they felt called to take, but in my experience conceptual art was pushed onto us, while those who chose to work with more traditional methods were often heavily criticised.
On the one hand, it was beneficial for me to get out of my comfort zone with art and experiment. On the other hand, there was a clear agenda and direction we were encouraged to take, which to me feels counterintuitive to what art is all about. It got so bad that students were essentially bullied in critique groups, and anything representative was called “illustrative”, as though that were a dirty word. And that’s a mild example. I got told to take all of my paintings to the dump apart from one that the lecturer liked.
Many students who were like me, who went to art school because they loved the beauty of painting, actually stopped creating art after graduation because of the feedback they received for not making art that was hyper-conceptual. I’ve wept after hearing from old university friends about their experiences and how the difficulty they faced during that time led them to putting down the paintbrushes for good.
Art-making is such a vulnerable practice, and many creatives are highly sensitive to feedback. Of course, feedback is essential in order to learn and grow; however, the criteria expectations alongside the delivery of criticism were often really difficult to push through. When you are placed in an environment that does not nurture anything of beauty or place faith in the student’s visions, it can have extremely negative repercussions. I could have been unlucky with the school I chose to go to, so I’m not sure what other universities are like, as I have not experienced them first-hand.
Do you feel things have improved since then, both within art schools and in the wider art world? In particular, has the rise of social media and the ability for artists to build their own audiences and connect directly with collectors influenced the landscape in any meaningful way? And do you think it places any pressure on galleries to pay more attention to the kinds of work the public genuinely responds to?
A student from my university reached out to me last year for an assignment and, from our conversations, unfortunately I don’t think much has changed there. I have hope, however. There will be a correction period where we return to honouring and respecting refined skill and beauty. I’m not anti-conceptualism or contemporary art at all, by the way. All art is an expression and is valid, as long as it is created with truth and authenticity by the artist.
In my opinion, the main problem we face is that we don’t have genres in art like there are in the music industry. With music, it doesn’t matter if someone is into pop, heavy metal or country — all music has its place and is universally loved. Different major record labels and festivals exist for different genres of music. Just because not everyone can own an original piece of art, it should not take away the voice of the general public, which at this point in time is largely confused by much contemporary art and does not really care to understand it. People are entitled to like what they like; there just needs to be a better system in place for art to be digested.
I believe this is slowly changing with social media and the rise of a new generation of collectors. When it comes to galleries, a lot depends on the tier of gallery we’re talking about. In mid-range or vanity galleries, I do think they’re adapting, as the new generation of collectors has emerged and is now largely influenced by social media. Social media has been a fantastic platform for artists to share their work unfiltered — they no longer rely on the gallery system to reach new audiences or sell their work. There are also many more ways to earn income now, which can support artists to keep working and remain financially independent. Even though there are certain video-editing trends, hooks and algorithm changes involved in social media reach, I think the platform has finally allowed the greater public to have a say in what they like and believe to be good. Because of this, galleries have to pay attention, while many collectors are now turning to red-chip art over blue-chip art. We’re seeing a lot of positive changes directly influenced by the public.
In saying this, the flip side of social media is its impact on the kind of art we’re seeing. For example, emerging artists might be influenced to create work that performs well on the app, not necessarily what is authentic to them, in an attempt to gain followers or sell more works. Or they may create content where the intention is attention, which once again might not reflect their personal truth. They can also lose focus on their art by trying to create the perfect content. The algorithm favours trends — as long as artists can toe the line of understanding what works without sacrificing their authenticity, it’s an incredible tool.
Knowing When a Work is Complete
At what point does a painting feel finished to you? Does that decision come instinctively, or through a more deliberate sense of resolution?
Right now, it’s complete when it’s as close to the reference as I can be bothered to take it. But I’m actually starting to paint some more experimental pieces on the side that are completely intuitive — something I did up until 2020, and that I’m once again revisiting. Painting something with no final result in mind, and just letting the painting take you where it needs to, can make it hard to know when it’s finished. Sometimes you can overdo a painting past the point where it should have been stopped. You never really know, and as they say, art is never truly complete, only abandoned. There is a sense of knowing that comes when it’s time to put the brushes down and walk away, though with some paintings that feeling never comes. But that’s all part of the fun.
Emerging Directions
As your practice continues to develop, what directions or questions are you currently finding yourself drawn towards?
I’m really excited about painting intuitively again. This will slightly shift meditation’s role in my work as well. It’s interesting — for the past few months, the imagery for future paintings hasn’t come to me in meditation, meaning it’s time to redirect. I can see meditation becoming part of the practice itself, where the process becomes part of a direct channel. It’s going to be a fun challenge.
Collecting
Do you collect anything yourself? If so, what tends to draw you to those objects? Is there something you own, not necessarily sentimental, that you value for its presence, design or craftsmanship?
I move around a lot, so I don’t find myself collecting too much physically. I’ll always hold on to sentimental things like birthday cards, love letters, concert tickets or special mementoes from occasions. I have a box of small things that remind me of memories with loved ones. For now, I like to keep things fairly minimal while I’m less tethered to one place; however, in the future I see myself collecting art or artisan goods. My favourite things are those that hold memories or reflect growth. Basically, if my house caught fire, the only things I’d save would be my art, box of memories, journals and hard drives. I have a beautiful home filled with gorgeous things, yet I’m kind of detached from most physical stuff.
An Independent Course
Over the course of Baudinet’s career, the work has moved from purely atmospheric compositions through the black-and-white years that clarified her direction, and into the figurative and atmospheric language that now defines it. Each shift has been driven by an internal logic rather than external pressure. The result is a practice that holds realism, abstraction, and surrealism in genuine tension, pursued with unusual independence and a clear sense of purpose. Having spent recent years refining a highly structured process built around digital references and meditative visions, she now finds herself drawn back towards intuition and direct engagement with the act of painting itself. Like the transitions that preceded it, this shift appears less a rejection of what came before than a continuation of an ongoing pursuit, one directed by a personal vision rather than prevailing expectations.
Ella Baudinet Official Website | Instagram
