Eleanor Ekserdjian

Eleanor Ekserdjian (b. 1996) is a painter and film artist whose practice blends moving images with rapid mark-making. By projecting film onto paper or canvas and drawing from and over it, she renders her physical and emotional responses visible through gesture, line, and rhythm. The resulting works move between abstraction and landscape, combining fluid motion with moments of striking precision to evoke both calm and dynamic movement.

Ekserdjian’s practice is rooted in an encounter between drawing and cinema, particularly the visual language and emotive force of silent film. Her layered process transforms projected imagery into lyrical fields of tension and atmosphere, where line functions as an immediate record of thought, sensation, and memory. Across painting, drawing, film, and installation, she explores how moving images can be translated into spatial and material experience.

She graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MA Fine Art (Hons) in 2019 and has since worked as a practising artist and freelance journalist, contributing writing on film to publications including The Article and Standpoint magazine. Her work has been presented through Messums and Gallery 286 in London, and she has exhibited in projects including Light & Line at Gallery 286, Spectral Pathways at Hidden Door Arts Festival, and the Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show. Messums describes her as an abstract painter and film artist, and has featured her work in exhibition presentations including Land & Source: Memories of Place.