STATEMENT

Ellie Cottrell, drawer based in Cheltenham.

Currently working in oil pastel on paper, I’ve been developing my drawing practice over the last 3 years. My work explores the figure and natural forms, playing with themes of human interaction, its necessary vulnerabilities and representation of thoughts repeatedly through the interference of nature. Rather than a portrait, figures and their interconnection with their surroundings mean to convey a feeling or idea. Pieces are built of layers of colour and texture that the paper breathes through, and although they aim to be “beautiful”, they can also incite a sense of unease and tension.

I am deeply interested in multitudes. Through the work, I am investigating how we interact with our own anxieties and the countervailing feelings of constraint and support, overwhelm and creation; the multiplicity and duality that we all and the world around us contain.

Each series contains aspects of this exploration into plurality, be it through trying to understand the monumentality of women; thinking about ritual and connection with the earth in a brief, fleeting moment of dance; working in duets, looking at how things can be seen from multiple ways at once; or simply my conversations with mundanity.

The work does not shout; it can be very quiet.