About

As Ellëa, I explore the space between scientific knowing and artistic becoming. My work emerges from the tension between ordered understanding and fluid creation, between the analytical and the intuitive. The name Ellëa itself—a mirror reflection of my origins—embodies this duality.

As a foundation art student, I am in the early stages of my artistic journey, exploring various materials and approaches whilst drawing on my background in behavioural science. I am particularly drawn to observational work and still life, seeing in these traditional forms potential gateways to a deeper engagement with the more-than-human world. Each piece becomes an experiment in presence, as I learn to set aside the academic impulse to categorise and control, instead allowing understanding to emerge through direct engagement with materials and subjects.

In a world increasingly mediated by digital technologies and binary thinking, my emerging practice seeks to reconnect with the ineffable qualities of direct experience. Through art-making, I explore what we might discover when we allow ourselves to learn through observation and action rather than through preconfigured ideas—what I have termed in my academic work as the “inductive loop” of discovery through engagement with the world’s affordances.

Professional Context

Ellëa is the artistic identity of Professor Gaëlle Vallée-Tourangeau, whose academic work explores how humans think and solve problems through their engagement with the material world. This dual identity reflects a commitment to understanding human creativity and cognition through both scientific research and artistic practice. Whilst these pursuits might seem distinct, they share a fundamental interest in how we come to know and create through direct engagement with our environment.

For academic work and research publications, please visit profgaelle.com.

For artistic enquiries: