Ellie Curtis – Illustrations and Textile Prints

This mural was painted by me and my friend Nick Morely who I sometimes make collaborative drawings with. It’s part of the East London Printmakers exhibition Wonderland, which is comprised of prints related to fairytales (my 3 exhibition pieces are in my screenprints section on this blog – The Battle of Birlundula).
We ran related workshops with kids in the October half-term; The kids created colourful fantasy characters, which they then stuck onto the landscape and created their own stories from the new giant picture..
We went to see the Indian minature show at the British Museum ‘Gardens and Cosmos’ for some inspiration for landscape layout in paintings, so some of my buildings became sort of indianafied. Have you seen that show? I think the last day is tomorrow, it’s really wonderful! I keep drifting off to sleep thinking about the paintings. The colours used are sublime, as is the line. In some places the details are so fine, that you may need spectacles to see them. Apparently, Indian minature artists can’t really work past 30 years old, because their eyesight fails because of the work. Do correct me if I’m wrong! You can have a look at some details of the paintings in my ‘Inspirational things’ link.

Some quick monoprints of a few men..

I made these drawings a few weeks ago for a group exhibition that is happening called The Art of Lost Words, and it’s being put on by ‘text/gallery’. Anyway, here’s the info: 5-10th March 2009 at The German Gymnasium, London. The word I’ve responded to is Benthonic ‘adj.living on the bottom of the sea.’

I did these two drawings for ‘Comica’ at the ICA gallery London in November 2008, as part of an interconnecting comic strip.