About
Discover
Behind The Easel.
Behind the Easel was born out of a shared love of storytelling and a fascination with artists. As Emmy and BAFTA-nominated documentary makers, we've filmed some remarkable people and the worlds they live in (click our links below if you're curious).
As a practising artist myself, I had always wanted to make the kind of films about painting that I longed to watch – films that go beyond technique or traditional interviews. I wanted to get in amongst the turps, the rags and the paint, right in the creative line of fire, recording the real time decisions and processes of some quite brilliant artists.
So that's what me and Pete created. These aren't tutorials or step-by-step demonstrations, but documentaries that invite you into an artist's world. We want you to feel like you're there, having an insightful chat over a cup of tea, witnessing the doubt, the happy accidents and the flashes of inspiration.
You'll come away with practical ideas, fresh ways of seeing, and the confidence to trust your own instincts to develop your own creative voice.
(I've already seen my painting improve!)
Nicola
Discover the Founders
The People Behind the Camera
Pete
Allibone
Pete Allibone is a Director of Photography whose career spans drama, documentary, commercials, natural history and feature films, accumulated over more than twenty years in the industry.
He began his career as a camera assistant at Shepperton Studios after graduating from Ravensbourne College of Design. Since then, he has shot in over 100 countries across every genre of filming. His credits include an Emmy-winning BBC series with Sir David Attenborough, and a BAFTA-nominated Channel 4 documentary. His work has received a Grierson nomination, an RTS Award, and recognition from the New York International Film & Television Festival.
Behind the Easel is Pete bringing that same eye, the one that has followed wildlife across continents and people through extraordinary circumstances, into the quieter, more intimate world of a painter's studio. The result is something the art world has simply never seen filmed this way before.
@peteallibone
Nicola
Tremain
Nicola Tremain is a painter and documentary director whose practice sits at the intersection of image-making and storytelling.
Working across landscape, portraiture and florals, her paintings explore timeless moments amidst contemporary noise, scenes where attention deepens and time feels more expansive. Her work is held in private collections, she has been artist in residence at Château Orquevaux in France and Hektor in Lanzarote, and in 2026 she appeared as a contestant on Sky Arts' Landscape Artist of the Year.
Alongside painting, her background in documentary directing has shaped how she thinks about narrative, framing and time. It is this dual perspective, as both a practitioner and a filmmaker, that makes Behind the Easel something only she could have conceived. She understands what it feels like to stand at a canvas, and she knows precisely where to point the camera.
@nicolatremainart
