Eelus interview

HUCK: Do you have any formal art education or is everything self-taught?
Eelus: My training since GCSE has been in design so since everything I've been doing over the past few years has been self-taught.

You mention on your site that you quit your job to pursue graphic art full time. What were you doing before?
I worked in the wonderful world of web design, mainly illustrating and making games for big companies. It was a great thing to be in at times but other times it just sucked the soul out of you.

How difficult is it to cope as a full-time artist in London?
I've been a full-time artist for almost three years now and lived in London for two of those. I think I was very lucky whilst living in London to get the breaks and meet the people that I did. Financially, it put me on the right track and allowed me to carry on without having to take on any commercial work. London can be a tough place to live though, for lots of different reasons other than money. There's so much distraction here, so much to do any time day or night, it can be hard to focus.

'The Colour Out of Space' is your first solo exhibition. So, what have you been doing until now?
Yeah, I've done a few commissions, fortunately no freelance. I've taken part in a lot of group shows and have been releasing my own prints which have been keeping me going. Last year was relatively quiet for me as I had a lot of stuff going on outside work but I also wanted to keep things quiet and spend time learning new things.

A lot of people are emerging on the street art scene and seem to want to market themselves as mysterious celebrities. Banksy has made a massive career out of such a move and people like Poster Boy and The Decapitator seem to be going in the same direction. What do you think about this?
Whatever works for them, I guess. Banksy, fair enough, the amount of work he's put outside he needs to keep his cover. Yeah, now the media have built him into this Robin Hood figure, the whole mystique around him has worked in his favour and become a part of who he is and what he does. Anyone else doing it is just trying to jump on the bandwagon a bit. They like the idea of being a mysterious celebrity but they'll always be the first person to tell you who they are, what they've done, what they're 'about'. I've asked to have my face hidden in interviews in the past but that's not to build up any kind of drama, it just makes me feel uncomfortable to see my face online in the same way that people cringe when they hear their own voice played back to them. I don't mind too much these days. It's all part of the job and I'm getting more used to it. I just take a bad photo and the last thing the world needs is another ugly mush grinning back at them from their monitor screens.

What artists inspired you to pursue a career in art?
I always wanted to be an artist. When I was a kid, my bedroom was covered in pictures by HR Giger, Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta. It's all I ever wanted to do. Then I grew up, the harsh reality of life got a grasp of me and I didn't think that would ever be a possibility until I discovered people like Banksy, Jamie Hewlett, Logan Hicks and Nick Walker.

What are your plans for the rest of the year once your solo show has finished? Do you have any further exhibitions coming up or projects you are working on?
In September, I'll be collaborating with C215. We're gonna take over the Brooklynite Gallery in NYC for a month. Then in October, I've had a hand in organising something amazing. I was asked to handpick a group of seven artists to fly to Gambia to transform a rural village with spray paint and bring art to a community that survive through farming to hopefully encourage tourism in the area. The people organising it out there have two charities set up trying to help eliminate poverty in an 85 square kilometre area called The Ballabu Conservation Project,it incorporates 14 villages and 100,000 people. The Eden Project is behind what we are doing and have given us a permanent exhibit in the tropical biome there. So I'll be going out there to paint for two weeks with Logan Hicks, Broken Crow, C215, Lucy McLauchlan, Will Barras and Eine. As you can imagine, I'm pretty excited about this and I think everyone else with a smidgen of interest in art should be too.

Eelus' debut exhibition, The Colour Out of Space, will be on display at Blackall Studios from February 25 - March 6.

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