Clay Ellis: New to the Gallery

Clay Ellis, "Another Toledo," 2019

mixed media canvas, 38" x 38"

New to the gallery: Introducing artist and sculptor Clay Ellis

CLAY ELLIS   

Born and raised on a ranch near Medicine Hat, Ellis currently resides in Edmonton, where he has maintained a studio since 1981. Ellis’ work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in England, France, Spain, Botswana, the USA, and Canada.

Though Clay Ellis established his reputation in the 1980s and 1990s with large-scale steel sculpture, by 1998 he traded his primary medium to experiment with synthetic resins. Since that time, his innovations utilizing industrial polyurethane have created bold and inventive artworks that confound sculptural and illusionistic space.

Oddly, his art reminds one of art itself, nostalgically early-wave modern. It’s created in no straightforward, traditional fashion, either – polyurethane is stencilled, melted and painted on both translucent sides, then affixed and painted into a larger canvas. Moulds create what looks like huge squeezes of paint – another reference back to art. And Ellis doesn't even have a name for the invention – essentially a behemoth spirograph – that he uses to carve shapes and paint giant ovals on his canvas “skins.”