Alice Ellis Bray - Contemporary Artist from Cornwall
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1. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
The connection I've found with my painting is my greatest achievement. I paint myself out of me, freeing me from feeling.
2. What motivates you to do what you do?
I paint to process. It's a form of healing and it allows me to meet my true self. It gifts me with my authenticity, and it shows me how I really feel. Painting takes my mask off and opens up a channel to just let go.
3. What do you owe your mother? My sensitive connection to this earth has been beautifully nurtured by my mother. She has taught me the sacred lesson of forgiveness, of letting go, of finding calm, of finding presence and seeing the good in all things.
4. Which women inspire you and why?
Clarissa Pinkola Estés because she has taught me so much about reclaiming my wild woman, about honouring my creative cycles and celebrating ALL of myself.
Frida Kahlo for expressing her authentic self, her true feelings shine through and her deep emotional and powerful connection to the world, including her pain, was expressed.
Kate Bush for her performance with sound and film, for the characters she became and the female power she beckons to us all with her soulful, soothing and raw voice.
5. What are you reading?
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham by Virginia Button
Daring Greatly by Brené Brown
And The Sea Priestess by Dion Fortune
6. What gender barriers have you had to hurdle?
Seeing and experiencing men treating woman badly because they are not taught how to treat women with respect. It's very distressing having seen and experienced men deciding to run away when women are in suffering.
7. How can the world be made a better place for women?
Education for boys about how to treat girls. Education about sex and hormones needs to be more detailed and open for younger generations.
8. Describe your perfect day?
It's raining hard on my metal studio roof, I have a fire lit, a cup of tea on the go and I'm lost in my painting.
9. We've noticed there really aren't many (if any) statues of women around Cornwall - who would you like to see remembered?
Ithell Colquhoun deserves a standing stone to be erected in her honour. Her words, her works and her spirituality got me through my early twenties and she has inspired a connection to the earth and a deep love for the stone for an ever-growing collective now, it's quite remarkable.
10. Give us a tip?
Spend time alone and in nature often.
Alice Ellis Bray (b. 1994) is an artist from Lamorna, Cornwall. She creates primarily with costume, painting, performance, and script to explore the infinite possibilities of identity and seeks to free herself with her creativity. Through learning the properties of nature as well as understanding the nature of people, Alice seeks to portray interconnectedness with all things to her own experience of being a 'self'.
