Ella Bril
Ella Bril creates large-scale figurative paintings inspired by people who she encounters in her everyday life. Ella recreates them on canvas in their own realm, sometimes staring out at the viewer and other times gazing softly into an undefined space. The figures appear alone or in groups, and are surrounded by expansive planes of bright colour, abstract imagery, and heavy gestural marks. Themes of nature, movement, and colour also surface in her work.
In ways, these figures and their surroundings are rooted in both reality and imagination. The elements of her compositions merge together to form a space that resembles our world but remains slightly elusive. Bril often thinks about why we as humans navigate our lives the way we do—what makes us do something or not do something. Humans are fascinating, beautiful, wise, and frustrating; She explores this intrigue through her own visual language. The artist channels both the positive and negative in her paintings; the atmosphere of the final works can be ambiguous, full of both recognizable yet distant imagery.
Ella aims to bring these characters to life with bold colours and play with perspective. For example, decorative elements in the background are often pushed forward to a place of significance beside a figure, and the dramatic colours she uses sometimes serve as subjects in and of themselves.
Check out Ella’s work below!