EVOLUTION Collage

James Ellis is a French contemporary collage artist working and living in the UK Working with collage, he endeavours to create balanced imagery from meticulously arranged colourful paper. Each piece of paper is hand cut with trust in a process based on chance. Minimalistic in shape and organic in form, his work is inspired by the natural world, yet remains abstract. The resulting imagery provides a place of comfort which is simultaneously familiar and otherworldly. Here, we are able to step freely out of our routine and completely relax. He is driven to create by a personal desire for space and fresh air; by a recurrent need to be released from the weight of life and to reconsider his direction in the world. In this safe place, he can question his own behaviours and habits, free from the judgemental ego. Although it is a very personal process, the collage technique has given him the freedom to create compositions in which everybody can find a meaning, an aspect of his work that he really enjoys. The flexibility and playfulness of this technique enables him to start each collage without having a particular idea, instead letting his physical response guide the creative process. He can then create art that is not limited by culture, religion or social class. The work goes beyond these frontiers and allows us to engage simply through feeling, something that we all have in common.