Artist Ellen Jewett creates wildly surrealist and fantastical animal sculptures only with clay, paints, finishes, and glazes. These wild animals from coyotes to chameleons are covered in a tangle of highly detailed flowers, leaves, and vines that show us a harmonious combination of creatures and their environments. “Each detail, down to the finest filigree, is free-modeled by hand.” Ellen says. “Within each piece precision is balanced by chaos. The overarching aesthetic knocks on the door of realism, yet the hand of the artist is never intentionally erased; brush strokes and fingerprints abound. Even the narratives themselves harbor a degree of anarchy as they are rarely formally structured. Rather, I seek to achieve flow states while working to create a fluid progression of unconscious imagery.”
