'The ocean of the unknown'...An interview with: Elise Poppy

Astral speak with Cumbria (UK) based illustrator @pea_artsoup

"I feel like I'm in a kind of hopeful liminality where I feel the potential of so many things. I think that as every small cycle of life goes you feel a bit lost and then realise you knew what you were doing the whole time- and I’m coming to peace with it for the first time..." - Elise Poppy (Astral Mag interview)

Read on below for the full interview..

Firstly how are you and how is life at the moment?

I’m actually finding inspiration in just the excitement of the visual purpose of art. I love to put my whole meaning and fascinations into artwork but I want to expand myself and explore the idea that art has a purpose to just serve as lines and colours, and see how far that can develop my practice and body of work. There's the phrase as you walk down a path it gets narrower so in order to keep growing and widening the path of possibilities one must always change perspectives.

Please tell us about yourself...where are you from and what do you love?

I’m from Bristol, I live now in Cumbria and the lakes. I love witnessing everything and letting it form connections and images in my mind. I love the blue of the expanding sky and sea and the unknown that exists in both. I love trying to discover human purpose without the veil of perspectives around me. I also love to laugh and try to be as myself as possible so others know it's ok to be who they want.

What are some of the key ideas and themes that inspire your work and where do you think your fascination with these ideas stems from?

Primarily my art comes from trying to free myself from the weight of my own experiences, and how the internal mind loops and patterns and devices itself, then frees itself completely. But this only is able to be applied into art form when I consider it in combination with the study of the world around us. I often get fixated on topics that feel like I'm falling into a deep well of love and obsession, a lot of the time its history. It fascinates me to imagine every act and thought of someone's daily life before me. I try to understand them as if I'm an alien coming into contact with humanity for the first time. I think the boundary of life and death here also pulls me, humans exist in extremes that are beautiful to come to terms with. Small things like light through a handmade curtain, a first kiss, seeing the world below from a plane.

My art also comes from the feeling of being an alien, as a child I remember trying to imagine how an alien would perceive my current reality and its strange rituals and routines. Now I think this has transformed more into the understanding that I am experiencing this all for the first time and therefore I can look as closely as possible and try and understand as deeply as I want. I relate this in my work to themes of being a ‘witness’. Through my art I'm able to abstractly pull together what I’ve witnessed and learnt and express how the connections form for me. 

The idea of worship through symbolism is very interesting to me too. Applying a metaphor to an object and making it into something recurring, giving it a narrative and life that has never been explored before. I think that's something ancient civilisations did well, finding something in their everyday surroundings and applying a myth or legend to it so it eventually became something other to what it originally was. I think my art holds a surreal ethereal nature because I'm always internalising how the outward experience is manifesting. I am always both inside my mind and completely immersed in the present and that makes my reality surreal in a way that I need to express. 

Could you please tell us about the process of creating a new work of art and what sort of emotions arise?

Sometimes it's hard for me to find the border between obsession and connection when I make art. From the point I decided to learn to draw, the feeling of transcendence was there. Originally I had wanted to be in science or history, though i didn't just want to learn what had already been written (though I understand now how creative those subjects are). I learnt to draw because it felt like I was discovering something new every-time i made something, every line and off proportion figure was something that had never been made before and was only existing out of every experience and thought I had ever had. I feel pulled that my purpose is to express the fact that everything I am is happening for the first time. I also knew that through practice, anything I wanted to achieve in art would become possible. It is like magic. 

A piece can take me days to weeks, not due to complexity but due to how I approach my inner critic and by how much I let myself trust my internal vision as well as my muscle memory. When I finally allow myself to sit in the stillness and apply no thoughts other than the motion of the pencil, that is when I make the best progress- it does feel a bit like a meditation as my mind has to be completely clear. Though when I finally gain access to these states is when I fall a bit into an ‘obsession’ but more because I feel the creativity pouring out of me and I don't want to stop, sometimes I have spent months lost in this weird space and when I finally focus on something else I notice all the things I have neglected. Though as to the first question I am finally learning the balance of it, staying in this creative flow and not neglecting myself completely.

Have mystical or esoteric traditions influenced your visual language?

Different expressions of meditation have brought me to artistic concepts I wouldn't have reached without allowing myself the clarity to think nothing at all. There is an expanse that can be experienced which I try to convey through different motifs that replicate the feeling in reality - like the depths of an ocean, the expanse in the sky or the endless spiral of a shell. I sometimes bring ancient symbols into my work like the prehistoric cup and ring carvings, celtic knots and star formations to connect my work to the past and to try and bridge the existence of our ancestors to the future. 

What has art revealed to you about the connections between dreams, imagination and consciousness? 

There is a thin border between imagination and how far we limit ourselves. One may think they are hyper imaginative yet it's only a word they’ve applied to themselves, just as one may think they are fully conscious yet again that is only a feeling of security they are placing. While it is not beneficial to have low self worth, allowing yourself to have a realistic inner voice and critic is the only way to truly reveal to yourself how much of something you are. And then through this realisation you can find that you can be anything. 

 I think to achieve an ever expanding imagination we must question our conscious beliefs, once again the path gets narrower the further you walk on it so it's up to you to widen the path. I understand that you can choose to dream about whatever you want, you can choose how conscious you want to be, and through those actions you can choose how your imagination navigates the world. One shouldn't be hard on themselves for having a certain ability to dream- just accept it and find a way to realise any possibility. 

What fills you with the most joy in relation to your work and life?  

Friendship is what I'm most grateful for. Learning to accept myself has bought me the most happiness. 

What does spirituality mean to you? 

I grew up in the church, I think this makes you ruminate on life and death a lot. I would pray every-night, I thought I’d feel God when singing worship. I left as it didn't align with my feelings of existence. I felt there was much more than what one religion was telling me - and all singular religions face corruption in their own ways, i didn't want to blindly follow when so much more of the world and its wisdom exists.  I ended up joining a Buddhist centre when living in Manchester - I have always been prone to depressive episodes, and after the lowest point in my life I gave myself permission to look for beauty and try to find peace with myself. I think it's our human mission to be curious and try to understand our own conditions of suffering. Spirituality and Buddhism are seemingly endless wells of descovery and wisdom.

I would walk 4 hours everyday to a yoga class as the movement and deep breaths allowed me to start accepting the pain in my body and mind and just let it go. I realised I wanted to feel the everythingness of the world, understand it deeply and learn as much as possible what it means to be human. Spirituality for me means searching, coming to terms with what is found and searching again, this cycle becomes deeper and easier each time. allowing you to transcend previous experiences of reality, and rebirth yourself.  Now I enter meditation and feel I'm just at the ocean of the unknown and it is not fearful, its expanse brings me comfort as I get to witness it and feel the sacred connection of everything.

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Discover more of Elise Poppy via:

• Instagram

• Inprnt

- Astral Magazine