Guillermo Del Toro tribute show

Here's my piece for the Guillermo Del Toro tribute show "In Service of Monsters" at Gallery 1988. Despite there being plenty to choose from I couldn't resist painting Hellboy. My piece is based on the Troll Market scene from Hellboy 2. It's watercolour and 297 x 420mm (approx). Available to buy online (or in person) from the gallery from this evening (September 11th). The show runs until October 3rd at Gallery 1988 (West), 7308 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles.

Goonies 30th Anniversary Show, Gallery Nucleus

"The Original Goonie" - my piece for the Goonies Show at Gallery Nucleus. Watercolour, 210 x 297mm. The show opens on May 23rd. Curated by Seb Mesnard.

The Glorious Flock at Sage, Gateshead

The Glorious Flock, the latest Felt Mistress exhibition, is now on at Sage Gateshead. 37 characters and 23 paintings/drawings. There's also a cabinet displaying displaying some of my original sketches and sketchbooks. And if you're in a spending mood the Sage shop is well stocked with FM goodies including signed copies of the book, vinyl Tippy toys, tea towels and travel pass holders. For more pics see the Felt Mistress blog.

Tramline Festival Gig Poster Exhibition

My Gold Panda risoprint poster for this weekend's Tramlines Festival Gig Poster exhibition at the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield. Curated by Drew Millward and Tom J Newell. A pleasure to exhibit alongside such a great bunch of artists. All prints are £20 each and signed and numbered by the artist. Also available in my shop after the festival.

The Hiber-Nation Opens

Our exhibition, The Hiber-Nation, opened at the Wales Millennium Centre last Thursday (December 5th) and runs until January 5th 2014. Thank you to everyone who came along, to Gulp for playing (brilliantly!) at the launch and to the WMC for making it all possible. Here's a selection of photos of what to expect if you're making your way to Cardiff to see it (including one of Louise/Felt Mistress with the incredible 9ft huggable Hugger that she made!). All work is for sale. If interested please email me for a price list (details in my profile). Thank you!

The Hiber-Nation at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff

We're very excited to announce our latest exhibition and it's our biggest yet! It's called "The Hiber-Nation" and it's at the Wales Millenium Centre in Cardiff. It contains 53 new pieces - 30 pieces of pieces of flat artwork from me (watercolours, acrylic paintings and ink drawings) and 23 new pieces from Louise (AKA Felt Mistress) including 3 HUGE new characters the tallest of which almost 9ft tall! The opening night is Thursday December 5th (6-8pm) and you're all invited.

There will also be music on the night from GULP. I think we're more excited about this than we are about the exhibition. We're not worthy!


Here's the press release with all the relevant details -

Mystical Welsh creatures to take up winter residence at Wales Millennium Centre


Seeking refuge from the harsh Welsh winter, The Hiber-Nation will be descending on Wales Millennium Centre this December. Hand-crafted by the inimitable Felt Mistress out of new and vintage fabrics including tweed, wool and flannel from Welsh mills, the band of quirky, colourful creatures are soon to be found huddled in stairwells and suspended from ceilings around the Centre.

Louise Evans, alias Felt Mistress, has crafted over 20 x 3D pieces for the exhibition, including 3 x 8-10ft works: a snow queen, a huggable yeti and a woodland guru.

The inspiration behind the 3D creatures lies in the striking illustrations created by Jonathan Edwards, Louise’s partner and a regular illustrator for the Guardian newspaper. Around 30 of Jonathan’s original works, – a collection of watercolours, acrylics and ink drawings - depicting the characters and the landscape they inhabit,will also be on display during the exhibition. Video content introducing the characters will also be presented on the Centre’s projection wall.

From her studio in North Wales, Felt Mistress has created a legion of felt characters for the best part of a decade. While both her work and Jonathan’s has been exhibited all over the world in cities including Osaka, Los Angeles, Berlin and London, The Hiber-Nation exhibition is to be the Welsh-born couple’s first in their homeland. In 2010, the couple presented a Christmas window display at Selfridge’s iconic Oxford Street store.

Louise Evans originally trained in fashion design and millinery and has brought many of the skills learnt through years of work as a couture dress maker to the world of character design. As well as original Felt Mistresscharacters, Louise has collaborated with a variety of artists including Jon Burgerman, Ben Newman and PeteFowler. A 400 page retrospective of her work, "Creature Couture - the Art of Felt Mistress" was published in December 2012.

Along with providing illustrations for the Guardian, Jonathan Edwards has produced illustrations and comic strips for magazines and publishers around the world. His artwork also appears on the covers of records by artists such as The Black Eyed Peas and The Jungle Brothers.

Louise Miles-Crust, Head of Programming, said: 'We're very excited to be bringing the work of Felt Mistress and Jonathan Edwards to the Centre this Christmas. Their work is both visually stunning and fun, so we hope that art lovers and families alike will enjoy the exhibition. It’s also great that we can host the homecoming exhibition for the talented Welsh duo and display some of the truly unique and exciting art and design work to be coming out of Wales.'

Felt Mistress will also be offering a free workshop on Saturday 14 December from 2.45pm to 4.45pm where participants will be able to make their own felt creatures - the perfect Christmas gifts. Booking is required as spaces are limited.

The exhibition will open on Friday 6 December, with an open-to-all launch party on Thursday 5 December 6pm-8pm, with live music from the band Gulp. The exhibition closes on Sunday 5 January 2014.

"Tony Cloudburst" for the Monster's Club Exhibition.

Here's my contribution to the Monster's Club exhibition. An A4 watercolour of your friend and mine, Mr Tony Cloudburst. It's an A4 watercolour available to purchase at the show. There's absolutely LOADS of great artists taking part. If you're in or near Bristol make sure to go along. Here's the official press release.

Explore a fun and bizarre exhibition that explores the playfulness and interactivity of character art. Featuring everything from plush designer toys and sculptures through to paintings and prints from illustrators, graffitti artists and monster makers from around the world.

Monsters Club celebrates art that can capture and communicate extreme emotions, encouraging the audience to imagine and contemplate fantastic narratives.

Curated by Bo Silvestre, Paul Roberts and Dom Williams, the show will be presented creating an environment with the feel of another universe. A universe inhabited by unique creatures, bizarre beasts, cute critters and magnificent monsters.

Just some of the amazing line up includes work from:

45RPM | Bill Giles | Bo Silvestre | Cat Rabbit | Cheo | Deth P Sun | Dom W | Felt Mistress | Hannah Dymond | Joel Millerchip | Jonathan E | Kristyna Baczynski | Lala Gallardo | Loch Ness | Matt 'Lunartik' JOnes | Michael C Hsiung | Muxxi | Niark1 || Paul Monsters | Rachel Pitler | RichT | Seb Burnett | Sepr | Seven Seas | SiMitchell | SpZero76 | Squirl | Steven Silverwood | Tim Ulewicz | WJC | Yema Yema | and more…

Opening Tuesday 29th October until 3rd November, with the preview night on the 29th, Bristol will see Park Street’s Parlour Showroom, opposite College Green, transformed into a different world.

Recent paintings

We're working towards an exhibition at the end of the year (details soon). Here's some of the work so far.

Quadrophenia - the painted version

As I mentioned in the previous post my piece for the Movie Show exhibition had to be an original piece of artwork produced traditionally without the aid of a computer. Here it is. Watercolours and ink. I enjoyed doing this a lot. I can't remember the last time I produced a finished piece without the aid of Photoshop! You can see everyone else's contribution on the blog. The show opens June 27 at the Galerie Daniel Maghen, Paris.

Pictoplasma Debriefing

Well, Pictoplasma was an absolute blast. We had the best of times. Above is the window to Sur La Montagne where our show "Gotta Get Up To Get Down". Louise made a group of gurus/lifecoaches and Anton and Amphibina came along for the ride. I provided 24 drawings for the "Wall of Assuagement" (the remaining drawings are available HERE). A group of disparate characters who had benefitted in some way from the advice of G'Goob, Groam, Gooplin and Gromp.


Groam

The Wall of Assuagement

Gooplin

Here's a pic of us onstage giving our talk (no idea what we're laughing at!). Photo by Andre Bucci courtesy of Pictoplasma.

And here's an amusing photo, taken by Louise, of a dinner discussion.

Thanks to everyone involved (in Pictoplasma in general not just in the dinner. Although it was a particularly good dinner).

Nas - The Don for Secret 7"

Here's my hand drawn sleeve for The Don by Nas. It's my contribution to this year's Secret 7" exhibition which opened today. Hopefully someone bought it. Was it you? Once again it was a pleasure to take part alongside such great artists.

"Got To Get Up To Get Down" - Felt Mistress exhibition in Berlin for Pictoplasma

We're very pleased to announce that as part of Pictoplasmas we will we exhibiting at Sur La Montagne, Berlin, from April 10th until April 14th. "Felt Mistress - Gotta Get Up To Get Down" will consist of a "gaggle of gurus" including Groam (pictured above), some old favourites and 24 new drawings/paintings (see the snap shots below for examples) which will form The Wall of Assuagement. More details HERE.



We're also giving a talk as part of the conference on Friday afternoon. Gulp! Directly afterwards at Platoon Kunsthalle Louise will be making a new character from beginning to end in front of your very eyes! Gasp! See you there.

Another Winter landscape

Here's another pic from my forthcoming "Snowman's Land" exhibition.

Snowman's Land

Here's the main image for my exhibition, Snowman's Land, starting in the Foyles cafe (Charing Cross Road, London) on the 18th of December. It's a continuation of my "Imagined Landscapes" series but with a Christmas slant. We've also got a Felt Mistress exhibition in the gallery on the 3rd floor from the 11th of December (same day as the book launch). It's a bit of a takeover!

I'm going to try and post an image a day on the run up to Christmas. Let's see how that goes....

Kitsune and Dragon at the Soma Gallery

Here's two new pieces I produced for our show at the Soma Gallery. Both are A1 brush pen drawings and are available to buy framed or unframed from the gallery. Also available are a selection of prints of my tree drawings from last year's Japan residency (presented below by G'goob!) alongside some of my other Japan prints. The show runs until September 15th.

Pettley, Graxxina & Crepuscule-Flenk

Here's the final 3. The show finishes on Wednesday July 4th. Catch it while you can!

Gronford Pettley

Pettley's no-nonsense cookery books and TV shows have been a huge success. "Get it Ate!", "Just Eat it and Shut Up" and "Scrape It Off! It Won't Kill You" have all been No 1 best sellers. His plans for the future include working with Jamie Oliver (as an ingredient). His new book, "50 Shades of Gravy", is due out this Autumn.

Graxxina

Self proclaimed "High Punk Priestess of Poetry" Graxxina opened for many of the classic monster Punk bands in London - "Frotch", "Gavin Froog and the Frongs" and "Pig Basket". She now presents "Oi! Old Stuff!", a radical new take on antique shows, with former Furry Mayhem bass player Groobo Tubbs, on digital TV channel UK Clutter.

Edwin Crepuscule-Flenk

Artist, poet, novelist and "nocturnal romantic". Edwin's band, The Decadent Prosimians, split acrimoniously after differences arising over styling mousse in 2005. Since the split Edwin has concentrated on his literary career and can often be found in his local graveyard communing with restless spirits and the old lady who walks her Yorkshire terrier past his favourite bench every morning. His poem "A fly died (in my hand (at midnight))" is to be adapted into a ballet in 2013.

All remaining originals are for sale at £150 each. Email me if you're interested. I'll be in Foyles taking the show down on Thursday so if you're in London you can collect the pieces from me then.

Trimbling & Swink

Today's dose of "Monster London" -

Milly Trimbling

Milly shocked 1960s Britain with a series of controversial novels including "Saucy!", "Saucy is as Saucy Does" and "Whither Saucy?". Her novels were praised for their vibrant, realistic portrayal of life as lived by young Londoners and, because of their explicit nature, were often sold in lead-lined suitcases wrapped in blankets.


Fetley Swink

Fetley Swink is the "coiffured face of pop science". His books on astronomy, String Theory, Quantum Mechanics and male grooming have all been best sellers. It has been said of Swink "Newton may have been a genius but he didn't have his own signature range of shampoos".