ESTHER COX

Esther is a pattern maker and illustrator based in Brighton, UK. I think I had a quite stereotypical thought, which I haven’t even noticed: an illustration should look like something. Her works just broke that idea. Those abstract marks and repeated patters in multiple colours don’t look like anything.

Her pattern works used as a painting itself and for the book covers, and although I am really into publication and printings, it was not the most interesting part of her works for me.

from Esther Cox’s Kiosk

Most of her works were used as the patterns on fabrics. She has shown us the examples of there patterns made into real clothes, those clients she worked with included Marks & Spencers, John Lewis, Uniqlo and so on. She said when she is selling her patterns, she gives all the copyrights to the company, so they can arrange, recolour, resize and so on to her patterns. She said sometimes she cannot find how her patterns been changed and used eventually. I haven’t thought using my paintings as the patterns on fabrics, so it was really refreshing concept to me.

After her talk, there was a workshop. She took some objects from her room, something like the plant, a shell, a soap, books and so on, and she put them all together on the table. After that, she wanted us to memorise them, and then after few minutes, we had to draw them only relying on our memories. It was quite hard to remember all of the objects, because they were complete random.

Now it was the time for the most interesting part of this workshop. All of us had to pick one object in our ind, then she wanted us to paint how it feels like, how it tastes like, and how it smells like.

I have chosen the apple, so it was quite easy to imagine how it tastes like and how it smells like, but it was still hard to draw or paint those. It would be a lot easier when we say how apples taste like and smell like. There were other students who have chosen the plant, socks, or the glass vase, and it was really interesting to see how they imagine their tastes and smells.