Ellie Cliftlands

Ellie Cliftlands is a Shropshire-based wood engraver, taking her inspiration from master engravers such as Thomas Bewick. Working in wood has given Ellie an individual voice; she shows it can be a powerful, graphic form, playful and quirky, or gently lyrical.

 

There are currently very few young wood engravers working in the UK, as it is no longer taught in art schools, but Ellie was lucky enough to be mentored by the eminent engraver, John Lawrence, and to be awarded a grant from the Society of Wood Engravers, specifically to support her final MA project, a non-traditional adaptation of the Grimm tale, The Juniper Tree.

 

Her work is currently in the Society of Wood Engravers’ 87th Annual Exhibition and in 2022, she was given the Society’s First Time Exhibitor Award, during the presentation of which her work was compared with that of Bewick. In the last couple of years she has exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and the Royal West of England
Academy. In 2025 she was welcomed as an elected member of the Society of Wood
Engravers.