About Tori
Tori Tipton is a Yorkshire based artist whose work explores how we encounter the past in the present, turning toward aged, weathered and worn surfaces in a world often focused on the new.
Prior to painting, she sourced vintage industrial relics for commercial design projects, a career that shaped her eye for patina, texture and objects marked by time- themes that continue to inform her artistic practice.
Rooted in a deep connection to place, her practice often begins with walking, gathering materials and noticing the subtle traces that speak to what endures and what fades. These found elements, chosen for both their aesthetic qualities and their ability to hold memory, ground each piece in a specific geography and history. Through slow, physical processes of layering and eroding, she mirrors natural acts of weathering and decay, creating work that quietly bears witness to time’s passage.
Tori has exhibited nationally and her paintings are held in private collections world wide. She continues to develop her practice through curated exhibitions and bespoke commissions.
Artist’s Statement
In a world preoccupied with the new and obsessed with perfection, I’m drawn to imperfection and aged surfaces that remind us that nothing escapes the passage of time, whether human life, objects, or memory itself.
My work explores memory, resilience and the subtle ways time leaves its mark. I am drawn to materials that have lived, weathered by rust, erosion or years of quiet use. These traces of wear carry a quiet beauty, and I use them as both subject and collaborator in the work.
I work primarily with found and reclaimed materials because they already hold a history. Their existing textures and imperfections become part of the visual language rather than something to be concealed. My process is layered and intuitive. I build and erode surfaces, add glazes, wash things back and allow unexpected marks to emerge. It is a balance between deliberate action and letting the materials guide me.
Underlying each piece is an interest in endurance and the quiet transformation that happens over time. I am influenced by ideas of wabi-sabi and the beauty of imperfection, the way something can feel both fragile and persistent at once. The work often carries a sense of half-erased memory, what remains rather than what has been lost.
“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.”