Ewan David Eason's warehouse studio space, which he shares with painter Yuma Radne, is filled to the brim with materials. Five large golden circles lay on one table, gilded and ready to go. "These were gilded just last week" Ewan shares, "Because this is aluminium, I use oil-based glue and then gild over the top. Once gilded, I wait 48 hours, and then it's a case of sealing them and making sure they're robust enough to put the artwork on top."
Throughout his career, Ewan has experimented with different mediums and subject matters - the gilded Mappa Mundi series explores city landscapes around the world, while his lenticular 'Season's Change' pieces represent through motion our ever-changing and resilient natural environment.
Ewan's first experiments with his now recognisable golden circular compositions began not with gilding, but printing. "I had an idea, and somebody said 'we've got this printer that does gold printing, it prints gold'. So I said, let's give it a test." Unfortunately the resulting process was incredibly time consuming, and expensive, so Ewan decided to try a different method. "I kind of went through the process of thinking 'how can I recreate that artwork?' (...) So I thought 'Ok, I need to teach myself how to gild.'"
This process of gilding entails covering the entire surface of the piece with squares of gold leaf, often working with a team for larger commissions, ensuring every area is smoothly covered to create a solid flat surface, ready for printing on top (the method of which is top secret!) When working on his paper based prints, the process is slightly different, using heavy stock paper and masking off all the areas that should remain bare, gilding the rest of the surface. "I then print directly on top of the gold leaf, " Ewan explains, ' so whatever I've defined in my Photoshop file to say I don't want to be printed is left exposed to the gold."
Ewan embraces aspects of digital technologies to create his designs and plan out his printing, allowing him to achieve an "insane amount of detail". Ewan's artistic career actually began out of working with technology. "Growing up I always had an interest in technology, in computers" Ewan recalls, "Before I was an artist, I was a graphic designer for a gallery (...) I'd studied Fine Art, so I did painting, I did video art. I've always had my finger in the pie of Adobe and Illustrator." It was this combination of a love of art, an understanding of technology, and an interest in printing techniques, that pushed Ewan's artistic journey.  Years of attending art fairs, refining his skills, and applying to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition culminated in a breakthrough. "In 2012 I got into the Summer Exhibition, I sold 35 pieces, and that was my trajectory to becoming a full time artist."
This practice is one of experimentation, research, and harmony between physical and digital techniques, developed through a strong commitment to testing out ideas and trying new things. "Essentially, we (artists) are the people that try things out, make mistakes, and go "Ok, that didn't work, let's try something else', and eventually you do hit on something. I do feel very privileged that I have the opportunities, and of course, the money, to be able to try these things out. I do put a budget in my end of year of ‘this is how much I can spend on trying things out’, and then maybe something along the way will work."
Ewan David Eason's pieces can be viewed and purchased over on his artist page. For any enquiries, please contact us at info@tagfinearts.com

 

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