Portfolios - ARLETTE ESS

Bats I & II – ink and watercolour

BATS

Ink paintings of African Straw Coloured fruit bats, assembled

BATS I shows the bats in a baobab tree at night. They are the main pollinators of this iconic African tree, which opens its upside-down flowers at night for the bats to pollinate.

BATS II is a merry get-together with succulent fruit, with the bats feasting on mango, papaya, African figs, cherimoya, passion fruit and lychees. There is a slightly spooky ‘midnight’ version and a pastel-dreamy ‘dusk’ version.

Work in progress images after the text

Ooh Bats, the beloved totem animal of philosophers and outsiders! This strange animal which looks like a cross between a rodent and a bird (a Chinese name for the bat is ‘heavenly rat’), rests upside down, sleeps in caves and feeds in the dark, and carries babies on the chest like we do… of course our imagination has burdened these enigmatic creatures with all sorts of astonishing qualities and powers.

Earlier biologists like Linnaeus (18^th century) actually put bats very close to humans in their species classification – because of details like the slightly ‘humanoid’ faces in insect-eating bats, and their single pair of nipples at chest height, which is otherwise a feature of primates. Oh, and bats also menstruate, which is also a primate thing, with only one other known exception in the animal kingdom (the elephant shrew).

The bat’s perceived ‘in-betweenness’ has often caused unease, manifesting a fear of the ‘hybrid’, and the association with a higher power or otherworldliness, in the West most commonly with melancholia, madness, night, death, darkness or worse – downright evil and demonic.

The English language has expressions attesting to this: batty, batshit crazy, taking off like a bat out of hell… and many ‘Batsploitation’ movies made use of our fear of bats.

However in the far east, especially China and Japan, bats are a sign and symbol of good fortune. In China, the Bat is also a substitute symbol for happiness (‘Bat’ and ‘Happiness’ are homonyms), and bats are often depicted alongside peaches ‘for a long and happy life’.

It has been pointed out that bats tend to be beloved in cultures where ancestral spirits are venerated, while in others, where the dead are believed to pass on and don’t return, bats are often perceived as demonic.

Scientifically, bats are the only truly flying mammal, and there are an astonishing 1331 known species of bats, and counting! They range from the tiniest ‘bumblebee bat’ weighing about as much as a bumblebee, to some large fruit bats with a wingspan the size of an adult human.

They can broadly be divided into the mainly small, insect-eating and echolocating bats (the majority of species) which live on all continents except Antarctica, and the fruit eating bats which usually live in tropical climes. Then there are the infamous ‘vampire bats’, the blood sucking kind, but they only comprise of three species of rather tiny bats in South America and they usually feed on farm animals.

The ones I chose for the artwork are African Straw Coloured fruitbats (Eidolon Helvum). These medium-sized bats are highly social creatures and travel in massive colonies of at least 100,000 individuals, sometimes massing up to 1 million. They also form the largest migration of mammals on the planet, up to 10 million straw-coloured fruit bats congregate every October to December in Kasanka National Park in Zambia!

Bats have very important functions in ecosystems, fruit bats are pollinators as well as seed dispersers, and many tree species depend on bats for their existence. The insect eating bats keep insect populations in check, including disease-transmitting mosquitos as well as agricultural ‘pests’.

Unfortunately, most bat species are declining due to habitat loss, and sometimes also because of killings due to human superstition or hunting for food. Bats reproduce very slowly as they usually only have one baby at a time once a year, and it takes a long time for a decimated population to recover.

Bats have also received a very bad reputation as disease transmitters. They do carry a large variety of viruses, and as fellow mammals this theoretically poses a danger to humans, but actual evidence of transmission is very thin on the ground, except for some rabies cases in the USA. Millions of people in Asia and Africa regularly hunt and eat bats, and there are lots of ‘bat rescuers’ all over the world who nurse injured bats or orphaned babies. Covid was first blamed on bats too, but the mutation of the bat virus which would be necessary for it to transmit between humans remains unexplained (involving either a third species or a lab accident).

In our times bats have become more beloved and admired, not only for their large contributions to ecosystems and reforestation, they seem fill an important role symbolically too.

Their attributes of getting along with each other peacefully, plus their air of otherness, which can be interpreted as feeling alienated or misunderstood, resonate with contemporary life. Not to forget their ability to navigate in the dark…

For me bats also symbolise our shadow parts (unconscious) and embracing these seemingly mysterious parts of ourselves as beautiful and useful.

A composition of bats peacefully feasting on fruit or flowers can symbolise our collective unconscious in a harmonious and abundant state.

Above: Work in progress images. After initial sketches to understand the bodies and shapes of the bats, I made a bunch of mini bats (and mini fruit) to cut out and play around with. It’s a playful and non-digital way to arrange elements and create a composition. I ended up deciding on 21 bats (including three babies), which I then proceeded to create in approximately life size drawings.

The final bats were first sketched in pencil. Details and textures of the fur and wings were drawn with pen and ink, before using washes of ink to build the shades of the bodies, wings and faces. Indian ink is waterproof, so the fine pen and ink lines were not erased when overpainted. Waterproof also means: better don’t make noticeable mistakes 🙂

For Bats II dusk, the fruit feast in pastel light, I changed the eyes from the nocturnal ‘deer in the headlight’ type to the diurnal eye colours of the bats. I didn’t want to alter the paintings so I just printed all the heads on good paper and painted new eyes to be inserted digitally.

The baobab flowers and buds are also ink paintings, while the fruit are watercolours.

Lazy Leopardesses – Hermès Paris carré for AW21

‘Lazy Leopardesses’ for Hermès Paris, AW21

This design was one of the winners of the Hermès Grand Prix du Carré scarf design competition, held in 2019/20. It won 3^rd prize out of 5500 entries.

Further below you can see work in progress images of the artwork, and here I’m listing some info about the leopards on the design, as well as why I chose leopards for this scarf:

‘LAZY LEOPARDESSES’ features five subspecies of leopards, all of them threatened or critically endangered. Whilst leopard prints are popular all over the world, the animals’ habitat has decimated and many varieties are on the brink of extinction.
Leopards exist in many areas throughout Asia and Africa, and only the African subspecies is not currently endangered.
Some species can have black individuals, this is just a different pigmentation and not a separate species. These ‘black panthers’ can be common in dense forest areas.

The following Leopards feature on the scarf (notice some differences in the spots and shades):

AMUR LEOPARD panthera pardus orientalis (on scarf: head bottom left)
Native to southeastern Russia and northern China.
Listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List

ARABIAN LEOPARD panthera pardus nimr (on scarf: curled up top right)
Native to the Arabian Peninsula.
Listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List

INDOCHINESE LEOPARD panthera pardus delacouri – here in darker pigmentation (on scarf: head bottom right)
Native to mainland Southeast Asia and southern China.
Listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List

JAVAN LEOPARD panthera pardus melas (on scarf: head top middle)
Native to the Indonesian island of Java.
Listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List

SRI LANKAN LEOPARD panthera pardus kotiya (on scarf: head top left)
Native to Sri Lanka.
Listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List

I chose the leopard as an icon. We perceive the elegant, gracious cat as strong and independent, yet also serene, relaxed, so self assured and tranquil.
And of course, there’s the leopard’s coat with its sublime pattern: extraordinary, mesmerising, a bit ostentatious even, and all this with the feeble excuse to act as camouflage!
No wonder we keep borrowing the leopard’s beautiful pattern for dress or decoration, it lends an air of the exotic, sumptuous, enigmatic, mysterious, with a touch of the wild and unpredictable.
In this instance I chose to depict leopardesses, to honour the often under-appreciated strength, grace and creative force of the female.

In our fleeting existence we’re always looking for the essence, the mystery, the timeless truth – but we mostly just grasp at ephemeral shapes and concepts, at what appears so luminous, yet slips back into the infinite haze of forms at the blink of an eye.

The timeless elegance of the leopard keeps its magical power, she is no victim of trends.
In the current times, classic style icons like the leopard have even more appeal, as we’re all realising that chasing trends doesn’t bring much satisfaction and damages our beautiful planet.

These are some images of the work in progress, as well as the finished artworks I sent to Hermès (one in black and white, one where I added colour).

At the beginning I always spend a lot of time thinking about the composition. The little coloured minisketches are some of the early trys. On the first raw composition (blue background) I wrote the mood I wanted to create with the finished piece.

I then did lots of sketching of Leopards in different positions, to understand their shapes and movements (no images). It’s sometimes very hard to get this accurate from photographs and videos, which never show all the angles. I couldn’t quite figure out how the animal would look from above when lying and curved, especially the shoulder blades and hind legs, so I made a (rather unsophisticated) clay model to have a better idea – kids clay at hand : )

After making a smaller scale composition sketch, I printed a few copies in large scale and drew on it with calligraphy brushes and ink to see if I can optimise the flow of the shapes. (This step is so enjoyable as there is no pressure to get it ‘perfect’, it’s just the joy of the flow!)

I then re-drew the finished composition with pencil onto thick aquarelle paper, on which I worked with layers of diluted Indian ink. This is the medium I have been using for most of my artworks. It is waterproof once on paper, so it’s quite unforgiving when it comes to mistakes, but I just love the no-nonsense simplicity of it, and the beautiful shading it can create. On one of the images you can see the undulating paper in the early morning sun.

For the spot patterns, I paid meticulous attention to stay true to nature for each of the animals. In nature, no two leopards have exactly the same spot pattern, but there are noticeable differences in spot sizes and shapes between some of the subspecies.

For the faces, I tried my best to make the leopardesses friendly, playful and gentle, so they can feel like trusted companions on the wearer’s adventures. I find that when I put a lot of work into drawing an animal, it seems to develop its own personality, I can kind of distinguish a character – I hope this translates for others too!

The final two images are the ones I sent to Hermès, the original ink painting, and a version in colour. The Hermès creative team translate the artworks to fit the Maison Hermès style, and to be suitable for the very sophisticated screen printing process. They also came up with the title ‘Lazy Leopardesses’, which I adore! There are some tiny changes to the design, as well as a rotation. Can you spot the missing tongue?

Swakara – pen and ink drawing

SWAKARA

A pen and ink drawing of persian lamb fur. This particular fur is of South African origin and is called Swakara.

The fur is tightly curled but has a linear structure, the ridge in the middle of the drawing is on the back of the lamb.

I drew everything straight from a vintage fur coat I found in Paris, sourced specifically for this drawing.

The pen and ink technique automatically creates a strong degree of abstraction by reducing everything to dark lines on light background. I didn’t want to create an illusion of a realistic 3D image of fur, which would have been achievable in pencil or oil colour. I like the semi-abstract structure which conserves only the ‘bare bones’ of the original.

The pen and ink process took about two months to complete. The result is a delicate drawing with an otherworldly feel to it, the detailed structure seems familiar yet aethereal.

The fur drawings appear to me like images of a frozen process, a vision of something intangible.

The idea of turning it into wallpaper and fabric was to create a hybrid of something minimal which is figurative at the same time. I took care to draw it uniform enough to appear textural whilst clearly showing its subject.

I joined the finished drawing into a continuous seamless pattern. The repeat shows the subtle vertical ridges characteristic of the structure of the fur, which form the back of my fur coat original. It is impossible to see where the drawing was joined, because it was drawn specifically to repeat invisibly.

The wallpaper was exhibited at Clerkenwell Design Week in May 2016 and is available to order, please use the contact form for more information.

Astrakhan – pen and ink drawing

ASTRAKHAN

A pen and ink drawing of tightly curled persian lamb fur, commonly called ‘Astrakhan’.

Astrakhan was very popular on fur coats during the first half of the 20th century, usually in black colour. I drew this from various bits of vintage fur.

The structure of this tightly curled fur in its deceptive uniformity is rather mesmerising, I became really absorbed in it. To me it appears like a frozen process, a vision of something intangible – maybe resembling a pattern of how thoughts develop or concepts evolve.

The resulting drawing emphasises this mesmerising quality. For me it has a certain delicious darkness to it, something visceral, but also something very elegant, decadent and dandyish.

Below are some work in progress images, including some initial experiments with inverted drawings. A preliminary study is available as a limited edition art print. I followed specific parts of the fur and drew them very faithfully, trying to capture its essence and attempting to understand the mystery behind the structure.

I made the finished drawing into a continuous pattern with an unobvious repeat, available as an upholstery velvet. The velvet really adds to the illusion of depth and softness. It also exists as a long silk satin dandy scarf.

silk scarf, body silk scarf, dog patterned scarf

Sleeping Dogs Video

Flowers Of Earthly Delights I & II

Flowers Of Earthly Delights I & II

Two erotic wallpapers, featured in the exhibitions ‘Surreal Women’ in 2010 (Flowers Of Earthly Delights I) and ‘Anatomy’ in 2011 (Flowers of Earthly Delights II) in the Cob Gallery in London.

The erotic content is subtly hidden in the design and not supposed to be its main focus. The pattern acknowledges the ornamental potential of genitals and their resemblance to certain flowers and fruits, and as such temporarily liberates these body parts from their sexual purposes. ‘Flowers of Earthly Delights’ I &II aim to usher in a somewhat utopian ‘post-sexualised’ world, where all types of genitals can be admired as a beautiful shape of nature, allowed to form a part of an unobtrusive decorative backdrop.

I chose the medium of wallpaper because it exists to be ignored as visual background noise. Within this destiny lies a possibility to spread messages which may be picked up on a subconscious level only, leading to a slow change in attitudes without provoking violent feelings of rejection. Displaying it is a very gentle subversive act.

Flowers of Earthly Delights I:

Conceived as a decorative backdrop with a rather conservative appearance. Beyond the aim to create a perfectly pleasant wallpaper design with a nostalgic feel lies another idea to create a perfectly innocent display of much neglected beauty in female anatomy.

Female genitalia are indeed trapped in a very bipolar world – either covered up and not talked about, or crudely displayed in pornography (where the more common and beautifully ornamental type seems to lose out to the ‘teenage’ stereotype).

But a wallpaper has no intention to reveal anything to the persons in its presence, unless they have a strong visual curiosity and properly scrutinise its content. Even so, without certain anatomical knowledge, it is just another pretty floral wallpaper which looks rather uncontemporary.

Flowers of Earthly Delights II:

Developed with the ambition to match the beauty and complexity of the centuries old damask designs, many of which are still in use today. Its feel is lush and tropical, with various flowers and other shapes of nature mixed among the foliage (contains stylised imagery of plants, fruits, flowers, male and female genitalia).

Both patterns are in no part a copy from historic sources. The damask is available as a flexographic printed wallpaper on the shop page.

Fly Lace – pen and ink drawings

sanitized

deodorized

desinfected

perfumed

cosmetically enhanced

nutritionally balanced

hormonally regulated

neurochemically stabilized

fully functional

(sophisticated)

The idea behind the fly lace is an idealistic attempt to cope with some of the complexities of modern life. The fly lace pattern represents a synthesis of two conflicting identities most of us are living with. We’re a product of nature on the one hand (in our original environment likely to be visited by flies), and ‘sophisticated’ members of society on the other (clad in elaborate man-made fabrics, covering up our smell and modifying our shape…)

The fly lace is a playful approach for functional members of society to be closer to themselves, remembering the wild creatures we are, or in this case, could be.

‘Fly Lace’ was part of the exhibition ‘INSECT ODYSSEY: Insects, books and the artistic imagination’ in 2022 at the Salisbury Museum, UK.

https://salisburymuseum.org.uk/whats-on/insect-odyssey-insects-books-and-the-artistic-imagination/

Sleeping Dogs – pen and ink drawings

SLEEPING DOGS

‘Sleeping Dogs’ is a large very detailed drawing assembled from individual pen and ink drawings. I added ‘work in progress’ sketches below to illustrate the process of creating it.

The dogs vary greatly, each one has a different texture of fur, is from a different breed or a mongrel, has a different character and pose. All together they form a unified landscape of dogs interwoven as a pattern.

The drawing is inspired and influenced by various experiences and mythologies.
The actual drawings are derived from very different dogs: many from sleeping street dogs I encountered on travels, others are beloved pets of friends, and of course i looked at lots of unknown darlings on the web. But I was trying to create a new identity for every dog (I believe the attempt to copy anything inevitably fails).

Dogs enjoy a rich mythological history. The dog has long been viewed as a liaison between the physical and non-physical dimensions. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Celts and Aztecs all have prescribed the dog as a sacred guardian of the Otherworlds.

Well-known examples are Cerberus, the three-headed dog guarding the entrance to Hades, the greek mythological underworld, and Anubis, the ancient egyptian dog- or jackal-headed god in charge of the transition to the Afterlife. Xoltl, the Aztec god of death and the setting sun had a dog’s head and led the sun through the nocturnal underworld, to be reborn with it at dawn.

Besides this powerful association with death and transition, as a symbol the dog often stands for loyalty, friendship, guardianship, protection and communication.

But the drawing also relates to the contemporary place which dogs occupy in the lives of humans.

Dogs are man-made animals. We coexist with them almost everywhere, and have been throughout most of our recorded history.
We breed them as helpers, friends, tools or weapons. A dog can be someone’s best friend and someone else’s worst insult. (The female dog is an insult even for dog-lovers – she is the bitch).

We may love dogs like family members, test chemicals on them, eat them, make them find explosives and people, have them guard premises and intimidate others, keep our sheep in check, pull our sledges, help us hunt, diminish our loneliness or act as fashion accessories. We use them, abuse them or spoil them.
If they live in the streets, we may feed them, befriend them, ignore them or shoot them. Their faithfulness and respect towards humans makes dogs bear almost anything we inflict on them.

The dog may be a mirror to us human beings – reflecting our diversity of values, how we treat each other, and our inconsistency as individuals and as a species. This allegorical relationship is ingrained in many popular cliches in various languages, some english examples are the underdog, a dog’s life, dog eat dog.
And… to let sleeping dogs lie may be a wise thing to do, or just pure cowardice, depending on the circumstances.

With the initial idea and research images I started out experimenting on how to draw the dogs, deciding whether to use a fine brush or a metal pen, whether to make them appear more three-dimensional or flat and textured etc. I then decided to draw them all together and spent a long time sketching and assembling dog-shapes, but at the time I wasn’t able to create a kind of unity and consistency when drawing them so closely together – they each needed to look different but form a harmonious whole. After lots of sketching I decided to draw them one by one with a metal pen, to have complete freedom in editing and combining them later. I chose a rather flat and finely textured appearance, resulting in a certain balance between them looking ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ at the same time.

Polaroids

A series of 4×5 inch type 59 Polaroids, taken with Felix Friedmann.

We had an old stash of this type of instant film which hasn’t been manufactured for years now, so the ones we used were well out of date. The polaroids are temperature sensitive when processing, and most were taken in the winter in a very cold space. We warmed them on the body, guessing the temperature and the timing, the outcome was unpredictable. Ripping them open to reveal the developed photo felt like discovering a magical version of what was in front of the camera. The colours are rarely accurate, there are visible traces of processing chemicals, small air bubbles, and sometimes areas of damaged emulsions. It reinforced the perception that photography is not actually depicting ‘reality’, it is merely creating an image of it.

Below are some closeup details.

Flying Cranes

FLYING CRANES- YUUZEN TOBUTSURU

Originally ink drawings, I entered these sketches into a Kimono design competition which called for artists to re-interpret and reinvigorate this great Japanese garment. The entry got shortlisted and exhibited at Tokyo Design week in 2014 (Dare to Dream). The traditional motif of the flying crane is frequently featured on Kimonos.

This text was accompanying the images:

The old order is no more, our formerly predictable paths have been fragmented into a caleidoscope of possibilities. We have lost control. We have abandoned traditions and symbols of times past. We have also gained new freedom.

I propose to re-interpret and reintegrate powerful heritage icons into this brave new world.

Some traditional items and symbols may feel left behind and beyond hope of recovery, alluding to a long lost past in their orderly, predictable perfection. By adapting them to our current sensibilities we can create contemporary versions of great cultural icons like the Kimono and enable people to identify with them anew.

My flying cranes are not soaring in harmony and serenity, they don’t know whether they are tumbling or flying, screaming or singing. But they are totally free, not bound by the many constraints of a more rigid and orderly past. The powerful beauty of their erratic movement and spontaneous contortion has its own elegance. They are the cranes of the present, dancing into an unknown future.

Similarly, the Kimono is made of a more raw looking and delicate fabric (silk georgette), and its borders are uneven and frayed. It can be worn layered on top of other clothing, or on its own on top of a simple silk slip dress. Maybe the occasion is formal, maybe casual, maybe a man is wearing it, maybe a mature lady – all these rules have softened. The Kimono is as relevant an icon as it has ever been.

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