Ella Beech
Ella Beech is a children’s book author and illustrator living in Cambridge, UK. After completing a BA in Fine Art Painting, she moved into children’s publishing, where she worked for 20 years in roles including Art Director and Head of Campbell Books. In 2019, she left publishing to complete an MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art.
Ella has been shortlisted for numerous prestigious awards—including the V&A Illustration Awards, Bologna Illustrators Exhibition, BolognaRagazzi Amazing Bookshelf, ABCD Awards, British Book Design & Production Awards, and the Peters Children’s Book of the Year—and was highly commended in the Macmillan Prize for Illustration. Additionally, her book Dear Vincent was selected for the BRAW Amazing Bookshelf and named a Times Children’s Book of the Year. She is an Associate Lecturer on the MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art.
Ella works in traditional media and is drawn to the happy accidents and rich textures that come from creating work on paper. She invariably makes a mess—and that’s how she makes new discoveries too. Her work is rooted in observational drawing: finding the beauty in the everyday through experiments in colour, texture, light, and composition.
When she’s not making art, she loves to knit and sew, go for long rambling walks by the river, and scour charity shops and car boot sales for treasures, which often inspire her stories.
