I have long admired her work, so when she invited me to meet her at her studio in Towyn in North Wales, I was happy to accept.
Elysia’s studio is in an unassuming bungalow tucked away on a quiet street a short walk from town. Inside, light spills generously through the windows, catching on works in progress and the ephemera of an artist in residence – completed canvases, paint and brushes.
‘I don’t live here, I just work here,’ she tells me. Her home is in St Asaph, a short drive away. ‘It’s a funny story. My dad goes swimming with the artist in that room, and he mentioned he had a studio with unused space and he offered it to me. I’ve been here about five years now.’
Elysia has just released a series of prints of her artworks (Image: Elysia Gilman)
In the main studio, a portrait on an easel immediately draws the eye. ‘This is a commission,’ Elysia explains. Her set-up is as contemporary as it is practical. Alongside the canvas, an iPad is taped to the easel, displaying the reference image. This image has a nautical feel, with a smiling gentleman in front of a window on what must be his boat, with another boat in the background.
Commissions form the backbone of Elysia’s practice and each piece is an investment of time and attention. The portrait in front of us has taken a week so far and is still evolving.
In the adjoining room, a much larger canvas lies mapped out on the floor. It is intricate, layered and ambitious. ‘It’s similar to a wedding piece I did before,’ Elysia says. ‘That took about two and a half weeks.’
The studio, flooded with natural light, is ideal for painting. ‘It does the job,’ she says simply.
Materials matter here too. Elysia works primarily in oils, recently incorporating water-based oils to speed up drying times. The difference, she explains, lies in how they are mixed, whether with water or other mediums, each choice subtly affecting the result.
Glimmer Before the Gala was inspired by family travels, and forms part of Elysia’s The Voyage collection (Image: Elysia Gilman)
Her route into painting has not been entirely conventional. After an art foundation and a fine art degree, she found herself disillusioned. ‘They told us you can’t do portraits, you can’t just paint what you want,’ she recalls. ‘I think they were trying to push you out of your comfort zone, but they didn’t really teach me how to paint.’
It is a familiar story among contemporary artists.
Often technique becomes something learned outside formal education.
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‘When I came home during Covid, I just thought, I need to do what I actually want to do,’ she says. ‘I’d decided I was going to follow my passion; I always knew I wanted to be an artist.’
That decision led to a year of dedicated portrait training at Walton Hall in Warrington, studying under a tutor trained at the Florence Academy of Fine Art. There, she learned the classical foundations – proportion, structure and discipline – that now underpin her work.
Before the studio, there was the kitchen table. ‘My mum got fed up with the paint marks everywhere,’ she says with a smile.
Portraiture remains her focus, though her interests extend beyond it. ‘I like figurative work as well, capturing moments,’ she says. ‘And I do some street scenes.’
The roots of her dedication to doing it her way stretch back to childhood. ‘I’ve always had that passion,’ she reflects. ‘I remember sitting with my grandad at the kitchen table and he’d teach me the names of the brushes.’
Her grandfather, artist Tony Gilman, painted in acrylics and watercolours. His influence lingers, not only in memory but in the tools she uses. ‘I used to wake up early and go downstairs to paint,’ she says. ‘I was always drawing, from different angles, such as a bird’s-eye view of a room.’ That instinct to observe and record has evolved into something more refined, but the core remains unchanged.
Social media has played a significant role in Elysia’s career. A video documenting the full process of a portrait commission gained almost 15million views on TikTok (@elysiagilmanart, where she has more than 360k followers), drawing attention far beyond the UK. The subject, a couple reunited in their eighties, struck a chord with audiences.
A video showing Elysia painting this portrait of a couple reunited later in life, Lin and Harold Rubin, amassed almost 15m views on TikTok (Image: Elysia Gilman)
‘I love capturing those kinds of moments,’ she says. ‘But social media is time consuming. It takes you away from what you’re wanting to do, which is paint. But the more
I did it, the more I thought, “Well, it’s a part of how I have to market myself.” It just becomes a part of the process.’
The rewards are tangible. International commissions followed, bringing both opportunity and pressure. ‘I had them back-to-back at one point, which was amazing, but busy.’
Despite this, Elysia remains grounded in her practice. In a second room, canvases are stacked and stored, some finished, others waiting. On one wall hangs a striking painting of the Savoy Hotel in London, its façade rendered with precision and atmosphere. It feels distinct from her portraiture, yet equally assured.
‘That was part of a series,’ she explains. ‘I watched a documentary about it and thought, I’ll paint a few scenes – and they did really well.’
The hotel itself shared the work on social media, a moment of recognition that sits among her growing achievements.
Elysia at work on her latest commission (Image: Tracy Tate)
At just 25, Elysia’s career already carries notable highlights. She appeared twice on Sky Art’s lockdown series, Sky Portrait Artist of the Week; first in 2020, winning one round with her portrait of Rob Rinder, and later, in 2023, returning for a live world-record painting event.
More recently, she has collaborated with British art supplier ProArte to develop a collection of oil brushes under her name. It is a hands-on partnership, focussed on quality and usability, with a set expected to retail at around £50. It signals a natural extension of her practice into retail, grounded in the tools she uses every day.
Back in the studio, the portrait on the easel continues to take shape. There is no rush, no sense of spectacle, just the steady accumulation of detail, brushstroke by brushstroke.
A recent wedding commission, featuring the new Mr & Mrs Franklin, Paul and Lucie (Image: Elysia Gilman)
Elysia Gilman’s work is rooted in observation, but it is driven by something more personal – a desire to preserve fleeting moments and translate them into something lasting. It is, perhaps, a continuation of those early mornings at the kitchen table, guided by her grandfather.
She still has his brushes and I cannot imagine he’d be anything but very proud..
elysiagilman.com @elysiagilmanart
Reflections at the Savoy, part of a series inspired by a television documentary about the famous hotel (Image: Elysia Gilman)