About Tori
Tori Tipton (b. 1971, Yorkshire) is a contemporary British artist who creates textural works that explore how we encounter the past in the present. In a world fixated on the new and the flawless, she turns instead to surfaces that are aged, weathered and worn.
Rooted in a deep connection to place, her practice begins with walking, an immersive, meditative act that informs both process and subject. As she moves through the landscape, she collects materials and notices subtle traces, fragments and remnants that speak to what endures and what fades.
Her paintings are built from natural materials gathered from the land – soil, clay, ash – which are combined with traditional binders and oil paint to create richly textured, layered surfaces. These materials are not chosen solely for their aesthetic qualities but for their ability to carry memory, grounding each work in a specific geography and history. Through the slow, physical act of layering and eroding, she mimics natural processes such as weathering and decay. The result is a body of work that is both deeply personal and universally resonant and that bears witness to time’s slow and inevitable passage.
Tori has exhibited in numerous galleries nationwide and her paintings are now part of private collections across the world.
“Tori Tipton’s paintings – created using raw, foraged earth, natural pigments and ink or chalk on wood – arouse a visceral sense of change through their intentional rustic wear. Through this transformation and decay, Tori strives to evoke a fragile sense of beauty, speaking both to the impermanence of our world and the shifting waves of our emotions.”
Artist’s Statement
In a world preoccupied with the new and obsessed with perfection, I’m drawn to imperfection, aged surfaces that tell stories of impermanence and remind us that nothing escapes the passage of time, whether human life, objects, or memory itself.
My work is shaped by a fascination with the ways we encounter the past. Through the slow, immersive practice of walking the land, I’m drawn to the act of searching and noticing small details others might pass by: a shard of pottery, a worn track, a trace in the soil. These quiet encounters spark my interest in what endures and what fades. They feed into my practice, inspiring a focus on textures and surfaces that carry the memory of time and place.
The creative process begins in the countryside that surrounds my studio, where I collect soil, clay, and other natural materials. These foraged elements are carefully mixed with binders to form the foundation of each piece. Texture becomes the underlying narrative in my work: the surface is rough, layered, and three-dimensional, bearing marks that echo natural processes such as decay and erosion.
The materials I use are not just physical substances, but carriers of memory. Combined with oil paint, they work together to form pieces that evoke a sense of history. This intentional collaboration with the land becomes a way of dissolving the boundary between ourselves and nature, offering a space where past and present, human and earth, are gently entangled.
