Ella Carty - Drawing from Rocks exhibition

Ella's first exhibition with the gallery in 2020,  Drawing from Rocks appeared online from 16th April - 7th June due to the COVID 19 lockdown rules

Ella is a painter who investigates her own experiences of the world and is interested in describing a process of perception, discovery and regeneration. She loves creating layers of associations from scavenged sources and likes the idea of other possibilities underneath layers of paint.

All of the drawings in her Drawing from Rocks exhibition were made on a hot day in July 2019 whilst drawing 'en Plein air' sitting on the rocks of the Island in St. Ives. Originally a fortified headland, it is not an island at all but rather a grassy peninsular sandwiched between Porthmeor Beach and Porthgwidden Beach with the iconic St. Nicholas Chapel set on top of it...

....It had been a while since I’d been outside sketching but from time to time I feel the need to go out to look and draw, to study and translate what I see into marks on paper. It is a method to help me re-boot something in my brain which sparks new creative ideas. The drawings I make are usually a starting point of new paintings.

There is something about the process of drawing from observation that is intensely absorbing. I find the act of looking really concentrates my mind. It allows for a kind of creative meditation. I had forgotten how much I really enjoyed the sense of calm, focus and revelation. It brings a state of both awareness and curiosity.

On this particular day, I had only taken ink and brushes and a little watercolour sketchbook with me. I sat happily on some low, dark rocks basking in the sunshine all afternoon, mesmerised by the sound of the sea, the shapes and patterns in the rocks and their surfaces: Seaweed, lichen and the remnants of years of natural erosion but also the marks left from years of mining.

Ella still supplies the gallery with blank greeting cards and her work can be purchased via her Etsy site.