Ella Flynn is a figurative painter currently based in Dublin, Ireland. She grew up in the southern suburb of Rathfarnham, the youngest in her family of five. Having attended school in Donnybrook, she went on to study English Literature and Classics at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 2026. She has published literary and artistic work with Tn2 Magazine and Icarus, Ireland’s oldest arts journal. 

Her practice flows from an impulse to cultivate gratitude and appreciate the moments of connection and community that colour her early twenties. With many friends emigrating and the structure of university life rapidly evaporating, Ella is dedicated to witnessing the architecture of her life as it stands before her – firmly rooted in love, beauty and joy. While mainly drawing on photographs she has taken over the last five years, her practice at moments returns to her childhood, where she once existed as a kid who knew nothing except the joy of being among people that she knew and loved, with a crayon or a book as a friend and close confidant. 

Through photos taken during the first few years of her life to snaps shot during the first few years of adulthood, Ella seeks to create a narrative in her work that reflects the experience of being aware that you are perpetually growing and moving away from what once was.

Just as those images of her as a kid are pinpricks of a past far off in the distance, too those photos from her uni days will be in the blink of an eye. Knowing that she will miss these days just as she misses the days of her childhood, the practice is a way to remember, to honour the joy and love and friendship which she finds herself so lucky to have. 

Following on from the completion of her undergrad in Classics, Ella is currently working on a collection based on the narrative of the self within Homer’s Odyssey. Using Robert Fitzgerald’s poetic translation, she is studying the epic book by book, collecting the imagery and filigreed language and assorting it into a record of becoming to be visualised through differing scenes from her youth and young adulthood. Ella hopes to create a sequence that traces the experience of leaving and coming to find a way back. 

Ella recently exhibited work for the first time at the Lily Selavie Gallery in Peckham, South London.