DAY TRIPPIN'
EVE GENTILHOMME & GEORGIA EZELL
Eve Gentilhomme is a French illustrator who studied art and graphics extensively across three different art schools. After working for many years as a graphic designer for children’s literature, she found herself increasingly drawn to the industry’s illustration aspect, and eventually decided to make the change. Since 2018, she has been working full-time as an illustrator. For Eve, inspiration can be found anywhere, “books, music, colours,” she explains, “it all starts from something that I want to say differently, in my own visual universe.”
Flower Girl
Her bright work combines wavy, block colour forms with a lexicon of symbolic motifs; snakes, rogue eyes, flowers and hearts populate her worlds that are joyful and hallucinatory in equal measure. “I always want my illustrations to evoke positive emotions,” she added, “I do this through both colour and theme.” Eve’s illustrations are reminiscent of the 1960s hippy culture, in one work, a girl stands amidst a psychedelic landscape of colourful mountains with hearts pouring out of her umbrella, while another depicts wild flowers blooming from the hair of an undisclosed woman.
You’re Gonna Be Ok
Eve starts each piece like a painter might start a canvas. First, she chooses her palette, often focusing on primary colours, before sketching her ideas in a notepad. Next, she scans the piece into illustrator, where she finalises the drawing. “I realise this softwares is used to make perfectly round shapes and graphics,” she told us, “but I like to use it differently, with the pencil tool, leaving the imperfections.” Through Cluster, Eve hopes to make connections with other artists, and establish new markets, specifically in England, “it’s also an opportunity to develop my language skills,” she added. Currently she is working on two children’s books, and working to develop her Instagram.
Likewise, the work of American illustrator Georgia Ezell is a kaleidoscopic melange of shape and colour. An undergraduate student of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA, she is currently studying for a Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design and Visual Marketing while working simultaneously as a freelance designer and illustrator. Georgia has recently been exhibited in Cluster’s Still and Motion exhibition, and has contributed designs and illustrations to a number of international publications and businesses.
Citrus Coffeecake | BUY THIS PIECE HERE
Integrity to Dissolution | BUY THIS PIECE HERE
Georgia describes her work as ‘highly-caffeinated’, a fitting description for illustrations so dynamic and densely packed. Her busy images swell with frenzied lines that swirl, melt and drip their way across the page, recalling the world of underground gig posters and DIY music zines. This maximalist approach to working is heightened by hyer-defining black outlines that lock in each colour as well as the psychedelic text and motifs that are worked into each of her landscapes; hers in a world where mangled mushrooms, smiley-face flowers and oozing skulls sit side by side in a dizzying array of colour.
Through stylistic visual references to DIY culture, her work maintains the edge of the haptic even when produced digitally. While she enjoys keeping a sketchbook and drawing by hand, most of her pieces are finalised using digital software like Illustrator and Procreate. These digital tools lend Georgia’s work a polished, ‘pop’ edge, demonstrated in her illuminating process videos that show the journey from the primary sketch to the final piece.
Fruit Flowers| BUY THIS PIECE HERE
While Eve’s work indulges in primary-colour positivity, Georgia channels the frenzied energy of underground music paraphernalia. In their unique ways, each artist embraces maximalism, using bright, block colour, undulating forms and ever so surreal motifs to recall the hallucinatory visuals of 1960s psychedelica.
Work by both Eve Gentilhomme & Georgia Ezell can be viewed on the Cluster Illustration platform
and purchased through our Cluster Illustration Online Shop.
Thank you for reading,
Stephanie Gavan & Cluster Team.