In other news, I’m pleased to reveal I’m planning something exciting. I seem to have stumbled through life being late to every cool party around. Never been entirely sure why this is, did I really lead such a sheltered upbringing in the grim north? Or have I spent most of my life going from day to day with my eyes to the floor, so lost in my own miserable little existence that everything I SHOULD have been into completely passed me by.

Whether it was music, literature or art, my eyes were only really opened when I first moved to London back in 2000, and even now, I’m still only just clumsily stumbling across things I wish I’d discovered years ago. Now, when I was a kid, I loved to spend hours making my own comics and magazines, writing my own fantasy stories and badly copying Frank Frazetta’s art to accompany them. But as I got older, a lot of that DIY mentality lost the great battle and was sent cowering to the caves at the back of my consciousness by things like girls, video games and horror movies. I still loved to draw, and that’s never gone away, but all my creative efforts began to be self consciously hidden away from the cruel world in sketchbooks, and so it was until I discovered the London street art scene back around 2002.

So it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I discovered something else almost completely new to me. Zines. I saw people printing their own little mini comics before but the penny never really dropped. Not only did I not realise that these small run, indie publications had been created by people just like me, in their own time, with their own dime, BUT this is also something I could do myself, just like when I was a kid.

So, late to the party as usual, I’m about to crash through the door with annoying enthusiasm, good intentions and a shit bottle of wine. My journey into the world of non-profit and extremely time consuming self publications is at hand, and I’m excited.

In the coming months I’ll get together the first issue of the Freak Show zine, and if all goes well will hopefully go on to release around 3 issues a year. Each and every copy will be a signed and numbered limited edition with screen printed covers and pull out posters, Gocco printed postcards, badges, photography, comic strips, illustration, stickers, mindless articles and anything else that seems like a good idea at the time.

She’ll eventually be a central part to a larger piece that will be used in a future project, but I’ll tell you more about that later

Here’s an actual relief of Erishkigal that I used as reference. I decided to ditch her 2 owls for the moment, but will hopefully be able to squeeze them into the final piece, simply because owls rule.

I’ve always loved the statue of Pazuzu, the Babylonian King of the Demons of the Wind; more famously known from the The Exorcist movies as the demon who crawled into Regan, making her get personally aquainted with a crucifix and vomit pea soup.

I used his upper wings as reference instead of the wings on the original relief. Having them raised seems more confrontational as well as increasing her overall size and making more impact.

But there’s good news. I’m now finally settled and unpacked in my new house and I also have an amazing new studio which is almost fully operational.

I’ll be throwing myself head first into the work from here on in and have some very exciting projects lined up which will all be documented right here on this blog which WILL be updated from now on EVERY SINGLE DAY in one form or another.

The time for half measures is behind us. I’m feeling incredibly re-motivated and focused after what I think was a pretty successful show, and now that I can operate day and night from such a large, inspiring space, I’m super excited about my future and direction as an artist.

All in all, things are about to get very serious, and about time too.

E.

The piece is a 1/1, there won’t be any more painted but I will be producing an edition of 75 screen prints in the very near future. If you’d like to enquire about the price and details of this painting then drop me an email at eelus@eelus.com .

This version to me feels how it looks, floaty, sweet, dreamlike. I toyed with the image more, the clouds came over, night fell and it slowly transformed itself into this…

This version has a lot more edge, a darker and more interesting narrative. How high is she? Is she awake or is it a dream? Will she fall or fly away? I’m lucky enough to dream quite a lot and I seem to fly around in most of my dreams so I’m guessing that’s had an influence here. One comment I got from a friend on my Eelus Facebook page was that if both images had soundtracks, the first would float along to Royksopp while the second was more Massive Attack, I love this and couldn’t agree more. I’m not really a fan of Royksopp so maybe that should be a sign?

The idea is to release one of these images as my next print so a decision needs to be made. Both of these are just the digital sketches at the minute and need to be painted to add more life and soul to them so hopefully that will reveal which one to choose. Either way, both painted versions of these will be available to buy on www.eelus.com shortly with the print following behind at some point hopefully in the not too distant future.