Ben Elliott is an artist, who through etching and wood engraving, seeks to diagnose landscapes as vessels of memory.
Ben trained as a printmaker at the Edinburgh College of Art and read art history and literature at York. He has exhibited his work at the Royal Scottish Academy.
Based in Edinburgh and raised in Buckinghamshire and the Yorkshire Dales, Ben’s work proposes that to wander through a landscape is to construct a sentence. Memory emerges through movement, shaped by the grammar of experience. Only in retrospect do we insert punctuation into scattered impressions, forming a sense of place and, in that moment, a sense of self. Punctuating a shifting landscape - be it with a comma or full stop - is an act of meaning-making, allowing us to define and memorialise place.
Through the rhythmic tactility of etching and wood engraving, Ben sees both printmaking and walking as acts of punctuation - each mark a step in recollection.
Ben’s work is shaped by the landscapes he roams and the literature he admires.
Exhibitions:
‘The Thread that Pulls’, Visual Arts Scotland Biennial Exhibition
December 2025 - January 2026
Royal Scottish Academy
The exhibition celebrated ‘slow, sustained looking, the kind of engagement that resists completion and instead deepens with time’ (Visual Arts Scotland).
420 exhibited works of 2,800 submissions showcasing the best of contemporary art in Scotland.
December 2025 - January 2026
Royal Scottish Academy
The exhibition celebrated ‘slow, sustained looking, the kind of engagement that resists completion and instead deepens with time’ (Visual Arts Scotland).
420 exhibited works of 2,800 submissions showcasing the best of contemporary art in Scotland.