Elle Dormer

I'm primarily a painter with an abstract and abstract impressionist style. I also make typographical textiles to complement my painting series.


I am interested in exploring what lies beneath. Whether that's a reflection in a mirror, a selfie on your phone, or an abstract image through which light appears to permeate. It's the mystery of the unspoken truth below the surface that fascinates me.

Having returned to an artistic path in mid-life, I am fizzing with inspiration, tempered by feelings of melancholy and rage at time lost and expectations imposed. Themes that preoccupy me include womanhood, aging, vanity and protest. My often dream-like pieces offer glimpses of fleeting moments, bittersweet memories and fantasies of roads not taken. Working regularly from photographs, including my own selfies, I'm interested in modern aestheticism: interrogating whether there is innate value in the curating and recording of one’s own image, or if attempts to reclaim our power via this medium are inevitably corrupted by the digital world and its algorithms.

I have a passion for colour, light and physical abstraction and am drawn to water and mirrors, often using neon-brights and geometric or organic shapes to shatter, obscure or dazzle the ...

University of Cambridge