Elly Mckerrow
Growing up was like peeling off my skin
Growing up was like peeling off my skin
In this project I was trying to encapsulate the mixed feelings of growing up. I chose to combine my favourite processes of poetry, sewing, embroidery, and printing to create a tapestry. I tried to encapsulate the mixture of loss with the naive excitement that both come with growing up.
The tapestry intends to feel like a mash up of conflicting feelings, representing the contrasting thoughts inside somebody’s brain. You can see sentences being scribbled out, reversed and repeated over and over again in an attempt to represent guilt, denial and overwhelm. The words sit amongst illustrations of a fairy-like playful world, representing the innocence of my younger self.
I often doodle and use this fairy like world to escape to and I loved bringing it to life through print and fabric. I use drawing and writing as a way to cope with the harder things in life and hope that by sharing my personal experiences others can connect and relate to it.
@ellyerrow
“Elly’s artwork combines text with a world of escapism from her imagination. She utilises her memories and feelings to create poems and stories and combines these with illustrations that tend to have magical and nature based themes.Exploring strong feelings of loss and depression next to playful, silly imagery like a naked fairy excites her!
She loves how illustration can be used to connect with others when sharing personal topics and enjoys using illustration as a tool to determine how serious she wants to be in that moment. Her work takes a fluid expressive style that encompasses drawing, print techniques, collaging and embroidery. Enjoying how the immediacy of sketches and mono printing look contrasted next to craft techniques that are much more considered and slow. ”
