Atelier Ellis and The Hepworth Wakefield introduce a creative partnership for the gallery's summer 2025 exhibition season
23 May 2025
This May, Atelier Ellis - makers of beautiful, breathable bio-based paint - introduce a creative partnership with The Hepworth Wakefield for the gallery's summer 2025 exhibition season.
Cassandra Ellis, colourist and founder of Atelier Ellis, has created seven bespoke colours for Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures and Caroline Walker: Mothering. The paints will also be available to purchase from Atelier Ellis, with 10% of proceeds going to support The Hepworth Wakefield.
Working closely with the exhibition curators, the colours have each been specially created to respond to the artists’ work. Chadwick’s practice embraces the sensuous aspects of the natural world and often incorporates unexpected mediums, such as chocolate, flowers, snow and milk, while Caroline Walker’s intimate paintings offer a lens into the everyday lives of women. The palette has been meticulously crafted to enhance the viewing experience of the exhibitions, in quiet support of the curatorial expertise.
‘Crafting a bespoke palette for The Hepworth Wakefield has been a joyful experience for me. Humans, art, materialism, research, and belonging are at the foundations of Atelier Ellis. To create colours that quietly support the Helen Chadwick and Caroline Walker exhibitions is a dream partnership. I really am thrilled.’ Cassandra Ellis, Founder of Atelier Ellis.
Highlights include 3:44am – the deep and singular moment between night and day; Molten – the delicious swathe of melted chocolate. Everyone – a neutral to use everywhere for everyone; and The Grass is Greener – a confident and earthy grassy green.
‘We are thrilled that The Hepworth Wakefield is collaborating with Atelier Ellis for the summer season of exhibitions. Cassandra and the team create the most elegant, natural and ethical paint, with colours crafted as though by an artist. The bespoke range of shades that they have created for the Helen Chadwick and Caroline Walker exhibitions are intuitive and perceptive to the works of art that they will surround, as well as being exquisitely beautiful in their own right. We couldn’t be happier.’ Laura Smith, Director of Collection and Exhibitions, The Hepworth Wakefield.
The paints are available to order from the Atelier Ellis website or by visiting the Atelier Ellis studio, which opens this May at The Bottle Factory, 12 Ossory Road, Bermondsey, London, SE1 5AN.
The colours
Helen Chadwick: Life Pleasures
Marrow – A visceral but human pink. Alive and joyful to live with
Molten – The rich and delicious hue of melted chocolate
The Grass is Greener – An earthy green with brighter top notes – as grass gives in to summer sun
Reverie – An uplifting pale sky blue with yellow ochre to carry warmth.
Caroline Walker: Mothering
Everyone – The perfect neutral; balanced, easy and works everywhere for everyone
Gold Top – Full-fat milk; golden undertones in a milky white
3:44am – The deep milieu of the night; and the waking hour for many.
About Atelier Ellis
Atelier Ellis makes natural, breathable, bio-based paint and colour to help people tell their story of home.
Founded by Cassandra Ellis in 2018, Atelier Ellis is a human-scale business that looks for reminders of humanity in everything we do. Atelier Ellis is an independent maker of colour, formulating, making, and selling our own exceptional quality paint.
The 120 colours that make up the Atelier Ellis collection reflect a new classicism that is neither minimalist nor traditional. Embracing a simple-useful-beautiful aesthetic, the colours are deeply rooted in the natural world, as well as personal memories, marks, and fragments.
Inspired by the way we live in nature, in cities and society, the distinctive shades are designed to create quiet, joyful backdrops to people’s homes and lives, helping them tell their unique stories of home in the way they choose.
