Exploring Autistic Lived Experience Through Nature and the Body
First Artwork:
Encounters in the garden: Hiding
Both paintings pulse with colour and movement, lush and layered, as if alive. They breathe with foliage, offering glimpses of both the natural world and something more hidden.
Together, these works evoke nature’s abundance—lushness that hides and protects, but also reveals what lies within. They began as portraits of women, slowly overtaken by foliage. For me, this takeover is an act of respect: the plants step forward, carrying and expressing what I often keep hidden because of shyness, access barriers, and my autistic experience. Where I struggle to be seen or to speak, the foliage speaks for me. Through painting and through nature, I find a way to show what usually stays concealed, and a language of connection emerges.
The first glows with fiery reds and pinks, its leaves sharpening into flame-like forms layered in a dense, pulsing cluster. Against a cooler ground of greys and aquas, the red foliage burns like embers—colour that both conceals and exposes.
The second bursts with green vitality, leaves and stems overlapping, cascading, and twisting into a dense tangle. Bright flecks of red, yellow, and orange push through, while shadows veil what lies beneath. Above, a sky of violets, blues, and pinks presses close, as if the growth is both rooted and in flight.
Twelve of my paintings and pastel portraits were selected by BEAF Arts Co for Women in Art: You Are Not Alone 2025, exhibitions funded by the British Council and presented in Poland and Boscombe. My blue portrait was selected for the front cover of the brochure. In Boscombe, my portraits were commissioned for town centre banners/flags, bringing art directly into the public realm.
Audience responses to my art in Boscombe
(Collected on GOTBEAF review cards or comments on social media)
“Elinor’s artwork was the one that captured me the most. Absolutely loved it.” - Pipine Peperine
“I felt for the first time in quite a while as if the noise in my head had fallen silent. The space felt free and open and yet overflowing with the sentiment poured into the art that clung to the walls. It’s like drowning yet you can breathe in a way I cannot describe the joy of. ”
“As a neurodivergent photographer who works in social care, this has impressed me to continue creating art. I happily purchased Elinor’s art card with the portrait of the woman in blue. There is something ethereal about it.”
“I responded the most to Elinor’s work, I love the way each portrait is painted and there is something otherworldly and strong about each one.”
“Some amazing and emotive artists, some created because of the difficult experiences the artists have gone through. Very thought provoking. - R. Castro-Parker
“Elinor’s artwork is on fire.” - Plebbite
Audience responses to my art at the exhibition in Poland:
“Elinor I have seen your arts in Katowice, in Museum Slaskie. I am deeply impressed. Are any of your arts for sale?” - J. Pupkowska
“Elinor’s art stands out like Amadeo Modigliani paintings. The particular painting that compares to Elinor’s work is of Maud Abrantes: Amadeo painted Leontine Phipps, who belonged to the Parisian bohemian art circle. Leontine tried to realize herself as a painter by taking the pseudonym Maud Abrantes.” - P. Brozek
Cyclical Kinship
This work envisions a composition that mirrors the stages of human life through the growth cycles of plants. These are sketches of ideas ahead of the envisioned oil painting. However, audiences have been so taken by it, it is presented as a mosaic of images that audiences are invited to encounter on their own terms. Blossoms gather around women and growing folk, mothers cradle infants amidst lush greenery, while older figures stand framed by autumn leaves and seed pods. The arrangement suggests a cyclical kinship between human lives and the garden, where birth, growth, maturity, and decline are understood as interconnected rhythms. Through this interplay of people and plants, the piece reflects on continuity, renewal, and the shared temporality of all living things.
Soft pastels on paper
Each paper measures 16.5 x 11.7 inches.
Audience responses:
“I love these, so uplifting and so fresh!” - Angela Prince
