Ffocws #4

Katie Ellidge is a multidisciplinary artist, who threads her experiences, memories and surroundings into her work.

She works with reused materials with a variety of mediums such as paints, pencils, inks, textiles and wood in her practice. Katie often explores objects and the relationship we have with them, how precious items encapsulate stories, memories and emotions. She is fascinated in how objects are often left behind, living on and becoming a vestige of a person, animal, life and time. Katie is fascinated in ways of capturing moments, through collecting objects to use as inspiration for her work, as well as creating sketches documenting fleeting moments. Her more recent work explores the relationship we have with animals and the bonds we create with them.

Katie brings playfulness to her work, creating an expressive visual language through colourful mark making and patterns, adapting them to the subjects in her work. She enjoys exploring colours and how they interact with each other. Perception is fascinating to Katie. She explores it through the arrangement of subjects and patterns in relation to each other, working with a variety of materials, contrasting colours, as well as experimenting with two painting methods, illusionism and abstraction.

Rhi Moxon is a Welsh illustrator and printmaker who creates vibrant, textured illustrations inspired by her love of travel and playful curiosity about the world. Her artistic style is influenced by her obsession with printmaking, vintage children’s books, and Soviet-era design. Her time living in Poland and Shenzhen, China, has had a significant impact on her work, particularly Polish Poster Art and the contrast between futuristic Chinese cityscapes and rich ancient traditions.

Printmaking is a significant part of Rhi’s practice. She appreciates the beauty and possibilities of the technique, particularly its ability to democratize art through reproduction and wider distribution. Her preferred printmaking method is serigraphy, drawn to the visibility of ink on the page, the flatness of color, and the infinite possibilities it offers in layering color and texture.

Rhi’s work often takes the form of layered maps, prints, and books, frequently inspired by her travels and discoveries. She aims to capture the essence of a place, exploring themes of people, place, language, and culture, with a focus on domestic traditions and “people’s history.”

Making, drawing and painting are part of me. I cannot separate my work from life, or my life from the work. When I am intrigued, influenced or dominated by an idea, it splashes into the work through painted imagery, repeated pattern, or symbols as I can become totally immersed in the materials. Each sculpture or painting is created through maquettes, drawings. and then developed through hand building sculptural forms in various materials, often a combinations of clays including paperclay, and incorporating found and altered mixed media into pieces/structures/installations, or in various paint techniques on paper and/or canvas. Drawing and painted ideas come before, during and after, and sometimes remove the need to complete 3d work. This also happens in making when an idea starts through creative play with materials, and then changes and evolves into a piece without any drawing. Drawings, words, objects and part made pieces are all over the studio, and become reincorporated into work to change and alter direction. My usual subject matter is experimentation with altering the human or animal form, considering- what makes us appear human, and which features of the body are important to express gesture/emotion/attitude?

My practice revolves around the organic creation of marks arrived at through dynamic interaction of movement and material. I focus on action, and reaction. The movement used to encourage marks on the canvas, is visible in the impressions it creates and is an autobiographical creation. Material interactions symbolise a battle on the surface depicting an abstract exploration of everyday life.