Ellen McKenna is a Melbourne based pattern designer and artist. Ellen’s work started with a modernist aesthetic, featuring textured line works, abstract spots and bold shapes but has developed to include a more expressionistic style created with paint. Ellen uses her art and pattern work as creative expression with a focus on colour, shape, playfulness and balance. Inspired by multidisciplinary design elements from the early to mid 20th Century, Ellen’s aesthetic is also shaped by her lifelong study and love of the arts which includes, a Certificate IV in Design, a Certificate IV in Interior Decorating and graduating with a degree in Visual and Performing Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts.

Ellen's work has, so far, been featured in products by fashion, textile and home wares clients, such as Gillian Valentine, Natty and Polly, Sole Mio, Kablooie, Elm Lifestyle , Chester Street Clothing, Foxwood Clothing, Tokoencit, Little and Kind, Nerida Hansen Textiles, Cotton ON, Soxy Beast and a recent collaboration with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Ellen also produced a month long exhibition 'Feeling Colours’ which was hosted by the Bluethumb Art Gallery and was part of Melbourne Design Week 2021 NGV and featured Ellen’s art and textile design.

In 2020 Ellen was also shortlisted as a finalist and awarded a commendation in The Design Files + Laminex - Design Awards in the category of Textile Design.

Ellen's art work has also been featured in Home Design Magazine and has been included in a corporate art acquisition for the Queen and Collins Building in Melbourne.

Ellen works in both digital and painterly repeat pattern design and also standalone canvas and scalable digital placement art.