She Drifts in Beauty, Through the Night

Ella Garvey

The painter as archeologist: Ella Garvey collects imagery “spanning civilizations and styles, from ancient vessels to art nouveau design objects”. The result is an aesthetic of an eclectic sensibility – think Salvador Dalí or David Lynch. Or the poetry of Icelandic pop artist, Björk, whose songs create a space both hushed and thrilled – as you might describe a ritual, the sense of which inflects Ella’s paintings too. She’ll often compose them as frames within frames, alongside the recurrence of eyes this draws attention to the act of looking. Other symbols drift through her oeuvre: a sphinx, shells. They do so in painted space that has the removed reality of myth. 

When we talk about the magic of art, we don’t always mean it literally. But magic is foregrounded in these paintings, through the occult, strange and votive. ‘The Untethered Vessel’ may remind of Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ when he writes, "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter". The uncanny imbues these works, as in, what slips free of rationalisation into the wider realm of the sensual imagination. The esoteric is a source of renewed connection – including with the untold reveries of the past. What survives of us is a playful impulse, toward an elusive world