Given her penchant for painting on silk and linen, and her training in fashion design, it’s no surprise that Perth’s talented Elle Campbell calls herself a textile artist. The young artist also worked as a make-up artist for a decade, which may explain why her large, dramatic, abstract works use colour to such breathtaking effect.
“I would describe my work as luminous, large-scale, expressive and abstract,” says Elle. She paints mostly on silk and linen and usually in a fast, emotionally driven way.
And when it comes to inspiration, Elle draws on her natural surroundings – a practice that perhaps has its beginnings in childhood where she grew up on a farm in rural Dandaragan in Western Australia. “I am influenced by my current surroundings, imminent impulses and emotional response,” says Elle. She now works out of a studio set up in her garage in the Perth suburb of Inglewood.
“I predominantly use acrylic and enamel paint, markers and oil pastels on silk and linen base cloth. To paint cloth to endless limit has, and will stay, my biggest aim,” says Elle who has an Advanced Diploma of Fashion and Textile Design from Perth’s Central Institute of Technology.
“There has been the more recent emergence of subtle figurative narrative in my work too,” says Elle with reference to her latest collection titled SOMA and Nightmares that just launched through Greenhouse Interiors where she forms part of stylist Julia Green’s coveted artistic stable.
Elle has a civic focus too. “After experiencing a variety of public and community art projects I have grown a desire for rural health-based art projects.”
Photography: Armelle Habib | Styling: Julia Green for Greenhouse Interiors and Sarah Huckett – Lennox Rd