Meet Ellie Rich

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ellie Rich a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ellie, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

Creativity needs the right environment to thrive, and for me that begins at home. The place you live in every day sets the rhythm for what you make. Quiet corners, good light, tools within reach, real sleep, real meals. My husband, Dillon Richardson, is a creative soul too, and that shared language matters. We’ve built a home that works like an ecosystem for creativity. It’s warm, calm, and a little chaotic in the best way, full of projects in progress and the kind of energy that keeps ideas alive.



I don’t attempt to manage inspiration as I believe it has no interest in being managed. Instead, I build a life that invites it in, one filled with curiosity, movement, and meaning. Every trip, painting, photograph, and written line feeds the next. I move between mediums often because each one teaches me a new way to see the world and keeps my mind properly entertained.

When energy dips, I reset by noticing real things. Mountains before screens. The sound of rain without music. The way light shifts across a table through the day. Travel helps, but presence helps more. The point is not to chase a mood, it is to keep looking until something specific asks to be made.


In practice, my recipe is simple: a sane home, a partner who understands the work, consistent practice, regular walks, and the nerve to start before I feel ready. That mix keeps creativity not just alive, but growing.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My name is Eleonora Richardson, though many know me as Ellie Rich. I’m a multidisciplinary artist, photographer, and author based in Colorado. My work lives at the intersection of photography, modeling, fine art, storytelling, and purposeful living that makes every day count. Together with my husband, Dillon, I create visual and written worlds that celebrate natural beauty, craftsmanship, and emotion — from atmospheric photography and hand-painted pieces to my fantasy book series, Empire of Vanishing Light.

What defines my work isn’t just aesthetics. It’s the way every element speaks to the others. I don’t separate mediums because I don’t separate the parts of life that inspire them. The same attention that goes into framing a photograph finds its way into a sentence, a brushstroke, or even the way light moves through my studio. I like when art feels alive. When you can sense that it came from someone who pays attention to the world, not just the trend of the week.

At the moment, I’m expanding the universe of Empire of Vanishing Light through my second novel, creating new paintings, and continuing to capture stories through photography. Each project connected by the same purpose: to preserve beauty, emotion, and meaning in a way that can outlast the moment it was made for.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

If I had to narrow it down to three things, I’d say resilience, curiosity, and taste.


Resilience, because creativity isn’t always convenient. You have to keep working when the spark feels distant, when projects take longer than expected, or when no one quite understands what you’re building yet. It’s not about forcing inspiration but about showing up until it decides to join you again.


Curiosity, because that’s where originality lives. Everything interesting starts with a question — “what if,” “why not,” “how would this look from another angle?” It’s the one trait that keeps your work evolving instead of repeating itself.


And taste, because knowing what feels right matters more than knowing every rule. Skill alone doesn’t make great art; discernment does. Developing taste takes time, but it’s essential if you want the quality of your work to meet your creative ambitions. It teaches you when something is finished, when to let go of an idea, and when a risk is actually worth taking. You build taste through experience — by doing the work, failing often, and paying attention to what truly holds value instead of what only looks impressive from the surface. It grows through exposure and repetition, by studying the world around you, noticing details others miss, and having the honesty to admit when your own work isn’t there yet. The more you train your eye, the more instinctive your decisions become. That’s the turning point: when you stop trying to make “good” work that becomes a reference point rather than a reflection because it carries a kind of truth no technique alone can produce.



For anyone starting out, I’d say this: learn to finish things, learn to ask questions, and learn to trust your eye and business ethics. Those three habits will take you much further than raw talent ever could.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?

People often quote, “A jack of all trades is a master of none,” and stop there. They tend to forget the rest: “but oftentimes better than a master of one.” I’ve always found that second part much more useful because it’s a good reminder that range doesn’t mean lack of depth.

Mastery matters, of course. You need to go deep enough into a craft to understand its structure and rhythm. But once you’ve built a strong foundation, expanding outward is what keeps you evolving. I’ve never seen curiosity as a distraction from mastery. If anything, I believe that curiosity refines your focus. Learning across different fields only strengthens your primary craft because it gives you more tools, references, and ways to think. Every discipline teaches you something the others can’t.
So while I value expertise, I don’t believe in limiting myself to one narrow lane.

So yes, master something, but stay open to everything. The goal isn’t to become a specialist trapped in your own expertise, but a creator capable of seeing connections where others don’t. The world is too full of knowledge to ignore. You never know what small, unrelated thing might suddenly connect and change how you create. After all, genius often begins where curiosity refuses to stop.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

In Frames: Dillon Richardson and Ellie Rich
Photographers: Dillon Richardson and Ellie Rich
Wardrobes credits: Off-White™, Linennaive, Son de Flor, Lochaven, ROC Boots, Erika Peña, Kemo Sabe, Naked Wolfe, Mario Valentino, Louis Vuitton

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