About Ella

Born and raised in the rural landscape of Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida, Ella Swartz is a contemporary painter working primarily in large-scale acrylic compositions. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art with a minor in Art History from Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. Growing up on a farm surrounded by animals, especially horses, shaped her visual language and continues to inform her work.

Swartz’s practice centers on the relationship between women and animals, using recurring figures to build layered narratives that explore performance, identity, and the tension between visibility and control. Her horse imagery comes from lived experience and is reworked as both symbol and extension of the body. Figures shift between human and equine forms, creating spaces where strength, vulnerability, and spectacle exist at the same time.

Influenced by the histories and aesthetics of the American West, along with contemporary discussions of the gaze, her paintings examine how femininity is constructed, performed, and consumed. Working at a large scale, Swartz creates immersive, theatrical environments that often reference cyclical structures such as the carousel, suggesting repetition and endurance within systems of display.

Through vivid color, stylized forms, and narrative repetition, her work reclaims these spaces of performance, allowing her figures to move beyond passive spectacle and toward resistance and agency