For other uses, see Ella Guru (disambiguation).
Lil' Ruby, by Ella Guru, 2005.
Ella Guru (born May 24, 1966) (real name Ella Drauglis) is an American Stuckist painter and musician living in London. Her pseudonym is taken from a Captain Beefheart song on the Trout Mask Replica album.
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Contents
- 1 Life and career
- 2 See also
- 3 Sources
- 4 External links
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Life and career
Ella Guru was born in Ohio, USA and graduated from Ohio State University. She has lived in London since 1991 and is married to Stuckist artist Sexton Ming. Her daughter Lucy was born in 2004.
In 1993, she was number one in the Indie charts with the group Voodoo Queens.
In 1999, she was one of the twelve founder members of the pro-painting Stuckists art group, and took part in demonstrations against the Turner Prize outside Tate Britain. She started the Stuckist web site, which has been key to spreading the movement worldwide (now over 100 chapters in 30 countries).
The same year she was awarded "Painter of the Year" by Amsterdam Gay News.
She is known for an alternative "underground" life style, used to frequent fetish clubs as a dominatrix, and has a penchant for transvestites. The subject matter of her work often features such subjects, including many paintings of men and women wearing 1960s style beehive wigs. Although the content is frequently unorthodox, she paints in a "traditional" style, and states that she prefers the National Gallery to Tate Modern.
Self-Portrait with beard by Ella Guru
She has said:
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A painting can take between two days and two years. I start one by going out and getting pissed with my friends. Then the ideas will come from photos I take. They are often very bad, dark, fuzzy photos, so I have to use my imagination and real life studies later. I start from line drawing always. I like the subject to look three-dimensional. I admire Old Masters, but I don’t necessarily try to paint that way. When I went to Art College we did three years of painting nude models from life. I learned a lot from doing that. I care very much about ability and technique, and I’m always working to improve it, but I also admire work which is untrained but inventive. |
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She was a featured artist in the Stuckists' landmark show The Stuckists Punk Victorian at the Walker Art Gallery during the 2004 Liverpool Biennial. Her work has been shown in the Museum of Pop Culture, London, as well as in Germany, the United States, Australia, Amsterdam and New York City.
