Batman You Gimp

Lee Ellis is a British multi-media artist based in Bristol. His insatiable desire to create leads him to embrace different artistic mediums, from printmaking to drawing and painting and his bold and expressive style is characterized by the unusual juxtaposition of bright colors and dark subjects. Ellis’s paintings typically convey a visceral and deep-seated angst within his figures, and his raw, expressive brushstrokes make his style poignant and immediately affecting. In his most recent work however the depth of emotion is tempered by wit and originality. The Imposter Collection is based on a series of often familiar self-portraits by famous artists, revisited and given a new message and identity in Ellis’s compelling contemporary voice. “I like to use the human face as my subject, but in a way it acts as a vessel for my experimentation”, he says. “The person I’m painting typically becomes irrelevant as I use their features to hold the paint and the work evolves with every layer of color.”