palimpsests – Ella's Place

Posted on October 14, 2024 by ellajohnston12

Collage work

Teenage Days of Discovery, Mixed Media on Canvas Board

I’ve recently been playing with collage.

I’m inhabiting my inner Lee Krasner who often tore old canvas work and reinvigorated them as tremendous collage pieces. I’ve taken this idea and mashed it up a bit. Well quite a lot actually.

The process

Taking on my on-going fascination with the palimpsest, I took some canvas pieces and paper compositions I wasn’t happy with, tore them up and drew all over them with paint, permanent and metallic marker.

I then took some other canvas board and canvas pieces I’d already worked on and layered them with gold and silver leaf and wax paper. I then applied strips of my ‘customised’ canvases and paper pieces.

Once the layers were fixed, I made further marks using paint, crayon and marker to bring the pieces together.

The morning journey to school, mixed media on canvas. Ella Johnston artist — The morning journey to school, mixed media on canvas

The purpose

These were artworks made in my recent past. I wanted the pieces to reflect my deep past. Ultimately my childhood. Traditional nostalgic artworks and memoirs about childhood are so often depicted in some kind of rural ideal.

I didn’t grown up in a rural setting. I grew up in Hackney. Just off City Road. In the 70s and 80s. I went to school in Hoxton and spend Saturdays down Hoxton or Chapel Street Market or Dalston High Street. That was my childhood landscape.

Memories of Home, mixed media on canvas board

I wanted these collages to reflect the eclecticism of this environment. The reflections of rain on pavement, the graffiti tags, the flora and fauna of the Regent’s Canal, the tall buildings, the quality of light. The noise and the silence.

I also wanted these pieces to be about love. So I took tremendous care in putting them together.

As the past is a construct. These pieces are deliberately fragile as I am an unreliable narrator. It’s just my memories. My sensations and my truth not THE truth.

They really deal with my journeys to and from places. I walked a lot in my childhood. We didn’t have a car. While we lived centrally we had a bit of a walk to Old Street tube and the Angel. There were a lot of long streets and canal meanders. And a lot of clashing architecture. And it’s those contradictions and juxtapositions I wish to navigate in these works.

Childhood Landscape, mixed media on canvas board

Posted on July 23, 2019July 24, 2019 by ellajohnston12

PORT PIECES: Abstract ink works

PORT PIECES: Abstract Ink landscape, Ella Johnston

I’ve been recently working on a series of abstract ink works for a new book from Dunlin Press.

The book, PORT, is an anthology looking at the subject of ports. The publication essentially explores places where ‘here’ contacts ‘there’; where known and unknown meet; where perceptions of possible experience are expanded. It features essays, interviews, stories and poetry – I’m very excited to be working on it.

I thought long and hard about this project. I wanted something that reflected the character of such places. Because these locations by their nature are scenes of transition, movement and trade, I needed to convey their shape-shifting essence.

I pondered the medium and colours I was going to use for the pieces. I needed movement, flow and immediacy so I stuck with inks, my current tool of choice.

So I approached these compositions as palimpsests; each quick application of ink acting as layers of stories, activities and histories coming together. I played with colour initially but settled on black and white arrangements as I felt they were starker and more visceral.

I also experimented with the surfaces I applied my abstract ink works on. My paper selection is an integral part of every original piece. So I mixed it up a bit, using sumi rice paper, Arches smooth hot-pressed and textured cold pressed Arches watercolour paper. Every surface produced very different results as each paper type absorbs the ink washes, marks and strokes completely differently.

The abstract ink works will be featured as book illustrations, with a selection being printed as limited edition fine art prints and postcards as a companion to the publication. The book is being launched in the autumn and I’ll be sure you keep you updated on its progress here.

Posted on September 24, 2018September 26, 2018 by ellajohnston12

Experiments in ink!

In preparation for #inktober I’ve been playing with experiments in ink!

Composition, Indian ink feather and teasel drawing, book paper, silver leaf collage. Ella Johnston

Ages ago I told you about how as an artist and illustrator I strive for simplicity, well this has been a little mantra playing in my head all year so recently I gave into it. I’ve started working on art work and illustrations using simple black Indian ink and various mark-making tools.

Simplicity is hard.

Composition, Indian ink teasel drawing Ella Johnston

Composition, Indian ink feather and teasel drawing, book paper, gold leaf collage.

These scratchy ink sketches and gold/silver leaf and book paper collages are my first steps along my journey into the simple mark marking. Taking my cue from various Japanese ink artists I’ve experimented with my mark-making tools. I’ve fashioned ‘pens’ and ‘brushes’ from dried out teasels, found feathers, dried seed-heads and bunches of twigs to produce various line effects.

I thought I would combine these ink strokes with collage to create movement, contrast and texture. I’m also fascinated by palimpsests (where a manuscript or piece of written-on material has been written over but still bears visible traces of its earlier form) so I wanted to create a sense of that.

At the moment, I still need to work on my serenity ( I imagine a few people have remarked on that through the years).

I like combining humble unbleached papers I use for the inner pages of my hand-stitched books (sometimes painted with washes of colour, sometimes not) with gold and silver leaf to create a sense of collision. After these elements are layered up, I naturally want to produce something visceral and energetic over them with the ink marks.

Composition, Indian ink feather and teasel drawing, book paper, gold leaf collage. Ella Johnston

This mark-making method is real fun and, at this stage in my development with getting to know this way of working, I feel a little indulgent. I love the variation in marks the teasel, feather and seed-head tips create – I could go on all day marvelling at all the different line effects they produce.

Composition, Indian ink teasel, feather and seedhead drawing Ella Johnston