From an eight foot aviary inspired by a Venetian staircase for a client in Malibu to bookends for the Guggenheim Museum, from murals full of echoes of Ottoman architecture to a model of the lavish interior of the Opera at Versailles, Ellie Yannas’s comissions are as diverse as the flavours of the culktures that influenced her: Byzantium to Renaissance, Baroque to Middle East. Born in Istanbul and brought up in Athens, she studied painting at Chelsea School of Art and lives in London.

Her work explores personal impressions of architecture and memories of places. It includes paintings, full scale murals, screens and mirrors, handpainted boxes and pavilions and miniature rooms and buildings. The common and unifying elements in all the pieces are the texture of the painted surface and their architectural themes.

Ellie has worked for a variety of projects for private, corporate and public art clients over the years. Her commissions included murals for Dame Stephanie Shirley’s Art Collection at Prior’s Court School for Autistic Children, Berks. Her work has been shown, bought or commissioned over the years by museums, galleries and shops including, among others, the Barbican Centre, the Museum of Childhood of the V&A, the Brighton Museum, the McLellan Galleries in Glasgow, the Phillips Fine Art Auctioneers (Oxford), the Metropolitan Museum of Art Shop and the Guggenheim Museum Store, New York.