About Me
Hello, and thank you for visiting my website! My name's Elliott and I'm an artist based in the United Kingdom
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My work is inspired by a broad range of modernist architecture, although I do have a particular passion for the bold structural forms of brutalism, with its clean lines and geometric designs. I work with acrylic paint using a hard-edged painting style, creating large scale pieces based on the facades of different buildings that I’ve visited, photographed and been impressed by.
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You can find out more by viewing my artist statement below.
Artist Statement
Ideas and Inspiration
From an early age I’ve always been a perfectionist. I would diligently ensure that no lines were crossed in my colouring book and would instinctively reach for a ruler when asked to draw something. Later I discovered technical drawing, an artform that permitted the use of all the measuring instruments you can possibly think of.
The idea to combine technical drawing with acrylic paint first came to me when I was looking at the tower block paintings by David Hepher and he remains one of my greatest artistic influences. Hepher introduced me to brutalist architecture and legitimised the painting of, what many perceive to be ‘ugly’ buildings, as an acceptable subject matter.
My paintings are based on real buildings that I’ve visited and been inspired by. I’m attracted towards structures which consist of imposing geometric patterns that are unfussy, clean and relatively minimal. Although my work is primarily a depiction of buildings’ form, I also like to imply the presence human occupants by including the irregularities they create in the building’s façade, such as installing different coloured curtains or placing objects that can be seen from the outside.
Image Above: Stored and labelled acrylic colours for one of my paintings, which I keep in case of any tape bleeding.
The process of creating my work is as important to me as the end result. Producing art in a very controlled way using rulers, calculators, protractors, set squares and masking tape might not be everyone’s idea of fun, but I get a lot of satisfaction from the precise and clean nature of the result. My paintings take a long time to produce. For example, Silodam (pictured on this page) took approximately 350 hours. This is mostly due to the need to mask and unmask each layer of paint, as well as applying 3-4 coats to achieve a solid block of each colour.
Each piece is painted on MDF board, which provides me with a smooth, texture free surface to work on. Acrylic paint is introduced once the overall structure of the building has been drawn in, using masking tape to achieve the straight lines. I use my own photos as the basis of my work. My paintings are somewhat abstracted versions of the buildings, as I focus on trying to capture the building’s overall form as opposed to the finer details, as this is what I find so impressive about them.
Image Above: The types of buildings that inspire my work. To the left is the recently renamed Beacon Tower, Bristol, completed in 1973 and to right is the Atlas Building, London, completed in 2018.
Image Above: A peak into my sketchbook, where I plan out the dimensions of different elements of the paintings before applying them to the final composition.
Image Above: Silodam painting in progress. Here I've laid down the masking tape and have started painting the many different window frames.
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Image Above: The final result: Silodam, 99x120cm, Acrylic on Board, 2019.
Video Above: My painting process.
Check out my portfolio here.