GLOBAL LANDSCAPES RETROSPECTIVE

Ella Spira MBE has spent her career travelling the world to paint it, compose for it and protect it.

Grammy-nominated composer, visual artist, environmental advocate and co-founder of B Corp certified Sisters Grimm, Ella was honoured by His Majesty King Charles III with an MBE for services to arts and international trade.

Her Global Landscapes series has been exhibited at Carnegie Hall New York, Sadler’s Wells, Dubai Opera, Marina Bay Sands Singapore and Hampton Court Palace.

Original paintings, created entirely on location across four countries and eight territories, paired with original music compositions.

“Her paintings are far more than depictions of landscape. They are responses to the spirit of place, shaped by memory, sound, emotion, and a profound respect for South Africa’s people and culture.”

Pietra Mello-Pittman MBE, Co-Founder, Sisters Grimm

Global Landscapes is Ella Spira MBE’s life work of painting those places. Series of original works, created entirely on location across South Africa, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Hawaii, Australia, the UAE and beyond, not from a studio, not from memory, but from the ground itself.

Each painting begins in a moment of observation. Ella describes the process not just as creation but as translation, and herself as the vessel, interpreting the unspoken language of the natural landscape…. its culture, rhythms, energies, onto the canvas, through her emotion.

“Something speaks to me and I am the translator. Almost as a ribbon travelling, that decided it needs to pass through me.” – Ella Spira MBE

The intention behind every work is singular: to bring a place home to someone who may never reach it.

To give those who cannot travel to that landscape the chance to make that connection, charged with the energy and cultural essence of where it was made.

To elevate territories whose depth and beauty remain underrepresented in the art world and in the world at large.

Each painting is accompanied by an original musical composition that captures the emotional and musical essence of the place, composed by Ella herself.

Owning one of these works is not simply acquiring a painting. It is acquiring a recorded moment, a piece of experience, a living document of a place that will never exist again in exactly that form.

South Africa

The heart of the collection. A series of plein air paintings created across the Cape, the Karoo and the Western Cape coastline, including Cape Agulhas, the most southern tip of Africa, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet.

Each work was painted in direct encounter with the landscape, absorbing the light, the heat and the silence of the place itself. The South Africa series reflects Ella’s lifelong commitment to celebrating the natural and cultural beauty of a country, that inspired Ella’s musical composition for the Grammy-nominated South African musical production INALA, meaning “abundance of goodwill” in Zulu. Created in collaboration with the late Joseph Shabalala and the members of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the show is now presented at the House of Sisters Grimm.

UAE: 50 FOR 50

50 paintings. 50 landscapes. Created in situ across the Emirates for the UAE National 50th Anniversary, exhibited at Dubai Opera and Sharjah.

The series celebrates the ancient landscapes, spiritual architecture and natural environments of the Gulf, from the Al Ain Oasis and its oldest ghaf trees to the Sharjah Mosque, where Ella saw the spirituality of a culture reflected in its built landscape as clearly as in its natural one.

“The people and the land become one. And that is a testament, and an ask, to do more for our land, for our environment.” – Ella Spira MBE

The Series was presented during the UAE’s Nation’s 50th Anniversary, featuring Daughters of the Wind Overture: a dance-musical film directed by Jhenyfy Muller and filmed on the main stage of Dubai Opera, Ella’s paintings flowed in and out as a living backdrop to the story.

The film featured a performance by former Royal Ballet ballerina and Sisters Grimm co-founder Pietra-Mello-Pittman MBE.

An homage to the Abraham Accords and the hope of peaceful reconciliation across cultural and religious difference.

Ella, a British Jewish Grammy-nominated artist and third-generation Holocaust survivor, and DB Gad, an Egyptian Muslim rapper, chose not to sugarcoat what cultural difference can mean.

Japan

Painted in early 2023, reflecting on Ella’s travels in Japan in 2017 for the Sisters Grimm production Sakura, featuring the Tokyo Philharmonic Choir.

The Japan series captures Osaka, Kyoto’s Kiyomizu-dera temple and the ancient Jōmon Sugi cedar on Yakushima Island, believed to be over 5,000 years old, painted after a five-hour hike in torrential rain on handmade Igarashi Kozo paper crafted in Fukui, Japan.

“It was a humbling experience, the age of the tree seemed in keeping with the ancient traditions of Japan. It was an instance of culture and nature mirroring each other.” – Ella Spira MBE

Brazil

In 2015, Ella worked deep inside the Amazon Rainforest, São Paulo, Salvador and Rio de Janeiro for the Brazil series and for the Sisters Grimm production Voices of the Amazon, narrated by Jeremy Irons, with a score collaborating with indigenous flautists and the percussion group Olodum.

In 2022, she returned to paint the Serra do Mar’s peaks and the tropical coastline of Ubatuba. The Amazon series was born from witnessing logged land, trees felled and never replaced, and composing a chant for the trees that remained.

Every tree connected to the next through a network of deep blood-red roots, running beneath the forest floor like veins. A system of communication so intricate that when one tree is dying, the others send nutrients through the roots to sustain it. The forest keeps its own alive.

Ella Spira MBE walked through that network with Robinson, their indigenous guide, from the Amazon, who knows the forest the way you know your own home.

“It felt like the trees were crying.” – Ella Spira MBE

Standing at the edge of the logged land. Not a metaphor. A felt experience, the energetic field of living, breathing things suddenly absent. The silence where the network used to be.

Oceanography: Australia and Hawaii

The most abstract works in the collection. Painted with enamel on glass at Little Bay Beach and Palm Beach in New South Wales, and fifty, one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet underwater in Oahu, Hawaii.

The eight works in the Oceanography series were painted on enamel on glass: a material that holds light differently, that refracts and layers in the way water does at depth. Not a conventional seascape. Not the surface. The abyss.

Inspired by Ella’s brother Theo Spira, a Physical Oceanographer and PhD candidate whose research focuses on the Southern Ocean, the Oceanography series raises awareness of ocean ventilation and climate science through art.

The sonar systems oceanographers use to map underwater life inspired the lighting design for the Ocean Chamber installation.

“I want to serve oceanographers through my project, weaving their work into mine and making important research known.” – Ella Spira MBE

The music piece, Oceanography, that emerged from this series is a hypnotic, transporting musical journey that brings you into the depths of the ocean, symbolising the shared language of science and art.

Singapore

Singapore is known for its skyline and fast pace, but its true foundation lies beyond the city, in the contrast between the polished metropolis and the working life of its port.

One piece from the series captures the cargo ships: giants of steel quietly building the country’s foundation. Having painted them from above, Ella wanted to get closer, to understand them from within the landscape and capture their essence at the nearest possible distance.

So she and her team boarded a small boat toward the ships. Painting so close to the equator meant working in thick, humid air, where the atmosphere itself became part of the process.

No preparatory sketches, just the canvas on the bow, oil paint, and Ella’s direct connection to the environment.

Then a tropical storm arrived unexpectedly: rain falling across the canvas, umbrellas struggling against the wind.

“It became a collaboration with the rain. A collaboration with the elements.” – Ella Spira MBE

The marks left by the storm weren’t imperfections, they became part of the painting.

“I couldn’t recreate that. The rain recorded a part of the moment of the painting itself.” – Ella Spira MBE

Bar Charcoal

Some hard times don’t need a name. They just need a place to go.

In 2022, after going through a hard time, Ella found herself in bars around Singapore most evenings after work, a podcast in her ears, a familiar face behind the counter, the low hum of a room that asked nothing of her. She started drawing what was in front of her. Glasses. Bottles. The shape of light on glass.

“There is something very clear when you produce something, whether it’s a piece of art, a piece of music, or whatever your purpose fulfils. It was therapeutic. It wasn’t sad. It was breathing room.” – Ella Spira MBE

What became the Bar Charcoal series wasn’t planned as art. It was self-indulgent, in the truest sense, something made only for herself, with no audience in mind. But that’s often where the most honest work comes from.

A hard time asks you to keep going, not to disappear into it.

Ella found her way through by making something, small, quiet sketches that let her feel without being consumed.

“With art, we give ourselves permission to feel.” – Ella Spira MBE

Albania

For the works made in Albania during October 2021, Spira used palette knives rather than brushes. She roughly depicts craggy mountain faces, panoramic views and thundering cascades, whereby the application of paint itself gives a sensation of movement.

One of the paintings made by Spira during her time in Albania, ‘Shala River’, was gifted by the British Ambassador of Albania, Alastair King-Smith, to Prime Minister Edi Rama. That her painting constituted a gesture of friendship is especially poignant to Spira, a third generation Holocaust survivor who believes that cultural exchange and creative collaborations can lead to greater peace and mutual understanding. The history of Albania was itself uplifting for Spira, as the only European country with a Muslim majority which refused to obey Nazi orders to turn in Jews. Albania was the only European country to have a larger Jewish population at the end of the war than at its beginning.

Indonesia

Spira visited Indonesia and began collaborating with local artists in Bali in 2017. The result was ‘Bali Queen’: a show exploring the Balinese legendary character Rangda, a queen and warrior, played by the dancer Yasmin Priyatmoko Bohn. By this time, Spira had fully embraced a nomadic lifestyle, committed to international collaborations that lead to greater cultural exchange between peoples.

‘Pietra in Bogor’ was painted five years later, in 2022. It depicts Spira’s close friend and business partner, Pietra Mello-Pittman sitting under a banyan tree on the island of Java, reading. The roots of the tree envelop Pietra and provide a retreat and shelter against the cloudy sky. As creative producer, Pietra – a slight, red-haired former ballet dancer – always travels with Spira on her many journeys and painting excursions, and often features in her work. Spira’s inclusion of the human figure in her landscape blurs the boundaries between culture and nature. For her, nature and culture are not binary: what matters is humans’ relationship with nature, mediated by culture.

100% of proceeds from the sale of works presented at the Global Landscapes Retrospective go directly into the Sisters Grimm Social Impact Fund, now channelled into House of Sisters Grimm.

The fund carries a history of supporting programmes including the Grammy-nominated INALA.

And programmes like:

🌿 Art In Nature: environmental awareness through art, a global youth movement using creativity to inspire environmental awareness and connection with the natural world. Young people are given a platform to express their ideas, engage with climate action and become part of a worldwide creative community.

UAE Art In Nature: – UAE Art In Nature was a mass participation social impact initiative bringing together over 1,000 young artists from 100 schools across the UAE.

75 winning artworks transformed into a 3D animated world featured in the music video for “Windows of the Mind”. The video, created with music by Grammy-nominated Ella Spira MBE and DB Gad, has reached over 3.5 million views worldwide.

Since 2017, over 8,000 young people from diverse socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds have benefited from free access, workshops, mentoring and career signposting through Sisters Grimm outreach programmes.

INALA: the Grammy-nominated South African musical co-created with the late Joseph Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, performed at the Royal Albert Hall, Marina Bay Sands, Hampton Court Palace and for royal audiences.

Oceanography: raising awareness of ocean ventilation and climate science through art and immersive series, in collaboration with physical oceanographers including Ella’s brother Theo Spira, PhD candidate at a research unit focused on the Southern Ocean.

Female-founded · B Corp certified · MBE awarded by His Majesty King Charles III