Evan Gillis

Drawing • Painting • Mixed Media

Intensely detailed work that blends painting, drawing, printmaking, and mixed media. Reclaimed surfaces, hand-cut drawings, and classical print techniques sit under images built for story.

My work is a mix of painting, mixed media, printmaking, and drawing. I paint with acrylic and watercolor on canvas and on reclaimed material such as cabinets I sand down and treat. Those surfaces often become the base for mixed media pieces that sit between painting, drawing, and collage: a painted ground with hand-cut pieces of my ink drawings or prints laid in. On paper I use pen and ink, charcoal, and watercolor. I am also trained in stone lithography, woodcut, and etching. Every style I work in is highly detailed and built by hand, step by step. I have always preferred mediums tied to the past.

I work with death, rebirth, magical imagery, psychology, and fantastical and mythological subjects. I like clean, detailed images and pull from romanticism, symbolism, surrealism, and German expressionism. Alongside the more fantastical pictures, I make nature studies. John J. Audubon is a major influence. His style shapes my watercolors, pet portraiture, and the botanical elements that keep showing up in my work. Storytelling is at the center of the art I love, and I try to put that into every piece, whether it is a small watercolor or a large, heavily worked painting. Each one is meant to give the viewer a space to look, stay, and think.