Ellen G – Drawing the Sound of Reggae

For many years, the art­works of Ellen G have been part of the visu­al lan­guage sur­round­ing reg­gae, dub and sound sys­tem cul­ture world­wide. Her posters and cov­er illus­tra­tions car­ry a raw, rhyth­mic ener­gy – deeply root­ed in ses­sion cul­ture, DIY aes­thet­ics and the tra­di­tion of clas­sic Jamaican art­work. In this con­ver­sa­tion with Chris­t­ian Bautze-Boeke, Ellen G speaks about artis­tic roots, reg­gae cul­ture, Wil­fred Limo­nious, the ten­sion between ana­logue craft and dig­i­tal aes­thet­ics, and the deep rela­tion­ship between sound and image. ”There is much more to it than just a momen­tary enter­tain­ment, more to dive into, more to explore.” What emerges is not sim­ply an artist inter­view, but a wider reflec­tion on cul­ture, cre­ativ­i­ty and authen­tic­i­ty with­in reg­gae and sound sys­tem tra­di­tion.

Text: Chris­t­ian Bautze-Boeke /// Pho­tos: Ellen G

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You grew up in Russia and later became deeply connected to reggae and sound system culture in Israel. Looking back – what were the earliest visual memories or influences that shaped your artistic language?

Yes I, I was born in Baku, and lat­er moved to St. Peters­burg with my par­ents. There, at the age of 9 I start­ed study­ing in a junior Art school, get­ting the clas­si­cal paint­ing skills that lat­er served me in achiev­ing the real­is­tic aspect of my works. My inter­est in art had start­ed long before then. Dur­ing my ear­li­est child­hood years, both of my par­ents were in the midst of fin­ish­ing their degrees in archi­tec­ture, so there was a lot of paint­ing and draw­ing activ­i­ties around me in which I loved being engaged and watch.

Lots of art­books and lots of lit­er­a­ture accom­pa­nied me, while amongst oth­er visu­al imagery, the two art books that some­how had the most pro­found effect on my artis­tic imag­i­na­tion were: a book of paint­ings by Hieron­imus Bosch and a book of draw­ings by Her­luf Bid­strup – high­ly renowned in the Sovi­et Union, polit­i­cal and social com­men­tary illus­tra­tion artist whose effort­less and very humane depic­tion of var­i­ous types of char­ac­ters impressed and excit­ed me. These two books could keep me busy for hours, prob­a­bly because of the rich nar­ra­tives and high­ly detailed com­po­si­tions.

Anoth­er artist that I remem­ber enjoy­ing from that peri­od (the kinder­garten years) was Kandin­sky and I remem­ber try­ing to imi­tate his col­or­ful com­po­si­tions. I think that all of these in that way or oth­er, influ­enced my lat­er years draw­ing style, and I still see their works as a source of inspi­ra­tion both in the tech­ni­cal and the con­cep­tu­al aspects.

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Check out Ellen G’s extensive portfolio of artwork here.

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Do you remember the moment when reggae or dancehall first stopped being ”just music” and became a whole visual and emotional universe for you?

My part­ner in life, Ron aka Rank­ing Levy, was the one to intro­duce me to the end­less world of reg­gae music. Before we met, i.e. in my teens, I used to just lis­ten to any piece of music, with­out putting any effort in dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing between the dif­fer­ent gen­res, more than what was need­ed to find the tune after­wards; just enjoy­ing the melody, lyrics, or ener­gy of it, being briefly aware of the par­tic­u­lar school or tra­di­tion of the tune.

I didn’t real­ize then that some of the tunes I fan­cied belong to the ska and ragga­muf­fin school, but I learned as soon as I met Ron. He intro­duced me to the var­i­ous sub gen­res of reg­gae cul­ture and to the dis­tin­guished imagery of the album cov­ers. I guess it was then when I fell in love with rock­steady and dee­jay style, as these where the playlists I chose from all the vast vari­ety Ron intro­duced me to.

As I men­tioned, the album cov­ers illus­tra­tions had com­plete­ly blown my mind, in par­tic­u­lar, Limo­nious, Jamaal Pete and Tony McDer­mott – the absolute icons of reg­gae album artistry. I had nev­er imag­ined myself that one day I will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to join that amaz­ing craft, and was inter­est­ed only in obses­sive­ly search­ing for more and more visu­als, with­out any par­tic­u­lar cause besides pure excite­ment. I used to buy any record I found designed by one of these titans, and was so hap­py real­iz­ing that the music was as epic as the cov­ers!

For­tu­nate­ly for me, I got the chance to buy some records from the orig­i­nal stores and stu­dious in JA, dur­ing the sev­er­al times we vis­it­ed the island togeth­er. It was like mak­ing a pil­grim­age to the sacred tem­ple of this rich and mys­te­ri­ous cul­ture, get­ting to see the holy grail – the phys­i­cal print­ed cov­ers, even if only just to see some­times, because some LPs’ prices were too high for us, so all I could do is to take a pho­to of the cov­er. We even have some emp­ty cov­ers from these days, which the store/studio own­ers gave us out of cur­tesy, see­ing our enthu­si­asm.

Your posters often feel rhythmic – almost like visual dub versions full of layers, tension and movement. Do you consciously translate sound into image while working?

Thank you! It’s a very nice com­pli­ment! I think there’s no oth­er way when draw­ing music relat­ed scenes. I often feel that it’s not enough motion, espe­cial­ly when I draw a danc­ing crowd, because it isn’t easy to cre­ate a motion and keep it real­is­tic, so I study the dif­fer­ent moves and per­spec­tive angles to make it work. So, when draw­ing a dance scene, the inten­tion is def­i­nite­ly there.

Over­all, I think that it is an essen­tial fea­ture of an illus­tra­tion ”live”cated to a music theme, either if it’s a por­trait of an artist – who most of the time, even when stand­ing still, have some dynam­ic ener­gy that you can’t ignore – or more of an ambi­ent sce­nario, there has to be some motion in it. I am not sure that I think of it at all times, but rather the col­ors and the themes car­ry the rhyth­mic vibe.

There is one cer­tain art­work where I con­scious­ly aimed to trans­late the dub­bing tra­di­tion into the visu­al, which is the poster I did for a fes­ti­val in Toulouse, in 2023. The con­cept was to cre­ate an image that would pay a trib­ute to the leg­ends of the dub genre, and the main ref­er­ence was the icon­ic Greensleeves 12″ cov­er. But since I had rather a short time to do it, I didn’t want to just draw a list of dub artists, in a straight­for­ward imi­ta­tion of the ref­er­ence, but to include the ele­ments of the genre musi­cal esthet­ics. So I came up with incor­po­ra­tion rep­e­ti­tions that would empha­size some of the cru­cial ele­ments of the illus­tra­tion, like Jah Shaka’s hand hold­ing up the 45″ record, Sci­en­tists’ hands on the con­sole and King Tubby’s fin­gers turn­ing the pre­amp knob. I also mul­ti­plied Lee Perry’s con­sole knob tops, try­ing to recre­ate that spa­cy-unre­al effect that dub music gen­er­ates so often.

Many reggae lovers can see the spirit of Wilfred Limonious in your work – but your style also feels more psychedelic and contemporary. What fascinates you most about his visual language?

Thank you again! It is super flat­ter­ing being com­pared to one of my absolute icons! Of course, as I’ve men­tioned, Limo­nious’ art had a tremen­dous influ­ence on my work, long before I could imag­ine that one day I will illus­trate for an album cov­er myself. Not only his draw­ings, but the whole visu­al uni­verse he cre­at­ed, had stunned me from the moment I saw his work. His col­or pal­lets and the wild char­ac­ters he imag­ined, and his inter­pre­ta­tions of the artists he drew (like the one of Josey Wales, or Michael Palmer) – you can’t not admire it and become a fan imme­di­ate­ly!

When you see his illus­tra­tions, the whole atmos­phere of Jamaican cul­ture is awak­ened in your heart, all of its nuance and humor is just so present in his art­works, as if he had man­aged to dis­till the pure essence of that par­tic­u­lar vibe, that dis­tin­guish­es Jamaican cul­ture from any oth­er and that is what also com­mu­ni­cates it to any cul­ture lover no mat­ter where in the world he hap­pened to grow up. I love how hon­est, rough and unapolo­getic his imagery is, and how at the same time it is so humane and full of empa­thy and del­i­ca­cy. It is a real hon­or to be con­sid­ered as a kind of his pro­tégée.

Old dancehall artwork was often raw, funny, chaotic and full of attitude. What do you think contemporary reggae artwork sometimes lost along the way?

I think that in reg­gae art as well as in every oth­er field, the raw­ness you men­tion can eas­i­ly be van­ished by the var­i­ous tech­no­log­i­cal tools, either it is an AI image, or a desire to impress with a tech­ni­cal skill. At many cas­es the orig­i­nal char­ac­ter is hard­er to achieve, espe­cial­ly with the AI imagery, which being based on pre­vi­ous­ly cre­at­ed visu­als in the cat­e­go­ry prompt­ed, los­es orig­i­nal­i­ty. And at oth­er times a ten­den­cy to pro­vide as much work, as fast as pos­si­ble, makes the automa­tion behind it obvi­ous and the rep­e­ti­tion does not have the same spark as a sin­gu­lar image.

I think a same phe­nom­e­non is tak­ing place in the music pro­duc­tion, when musi­cians have so much tools to work with, and so many options to edit, that the out­come is at times a bit too per­fect, and that makes it a bit over­ly mod­er­ate. A good exam­ple of it is the cat­e­gor­i­cal dif­fer­ence in record­ing tech­nique – while back in the days the whole band had to be record­ed togeth­er, in a small room, on tape, which lim­it­ed the num­ber of takes, so every­body had to be in a per­fect sync, or rather all the slight imper­fec­tions were out­shined by the gen­er­al vibe that the play­ers shared with each oth­er. Today’s tech­nol­o­gy can in some cas­es impact the final prod­ucts in a way that the sound, although per­fect by all para­me­ters, will give a feel­ing of alien­ation. Rather than that, I think today there is an enor­mous amount of bril­liant young artists, and giv­en the unimag­in­ably once easy access to the artis­tic trea­sures to be inspired by, there is a huge poten­tial for a vast new cre­ation to come.

Your work never feels over-polished or corporate. How important is DIY energy and imperfection in your creative process?

Thank you again. Actu­al­ly, as one of my men­tors had said to me once – the art­work is nev­er fin­ished in the eyes of the artist, since the artist always will see more work to be done. Any fin­ished work is a com­pro­mise, even when there’s no real due-date for the com­ple­tion, you have to stop at some point, know­ing that you could have done bet­ter. That’s an aspect I love, (although it can be frus­trat­ing at times when I real­ly have to work quick) because the pas­sion to cre­ate nev­er ceas­es. So, the DIY aspect is impor­tant in the way that I real­ly enjoy the process, but it is not in any case inten­tion­al. Did you know that Leonar­do Da Vin­ci had been work­ing on the Last Sup­per paint­ing for three years? And I am sure he just had to fin­ish it at some point, oth­er­wise he could have con­tin­ued for the next three years. I am not com­par­ing myself, but I sure­ly can under­stand the sen­ti­ment.

What does your actual working process look like? Are you sketching with music playing loud in the background, or is creating visual art a completely different mental space for you?

I love lis­ten­ing to music while work­ing, and I also love to enjoy a lec­ture, or an audio­book. It depends on the mood I’m in that day and also on the type of work I’m going to do. When I’m sketch­ing, I pre­fer music, because that part takes a lot of plan­ning and ana­lyt­i­cal think­ing, even though the process is com­par­a­tive­ly short. But when all the ele­ments are there and it’s the work on details, I can lis­ten to a lec­ture, or an audio­book. Some­times I get an inspi­ra­tion, from the ideas I hear, to add some detail or oth­er to the nar­ra­tive of the com­po­si­tion.

You’ve worked closely with sound system culture and reggae crews. What makes visual art essential to a session, a dance or a sound system identity?

To me, all expres­sions of art are inter­vened with each oth­er. Reg­gae music, in all its dif­fer­ent expres­sions, is an art form that—like any other—embraces every­thing the human mind and heart can per­ceive. Reg­gae cul­ture is an ever-evolv­ing ecosys­tem, where the pulse of the music gives life to many dif­fer­ent forms of expres­sion: lin­guis­tic inno­va­tion, visu­al iden­ti­ty, and per­for­mance styles. All of these ele­ments are inter­twined, con­stant­ly influ­enc­ing one anoth­er while also draw­ing from and con­tribut­ing to the glob­al cul­tur­al world.

It’s like, you can’t detach the sound sys­tem cul­ture from its ori­gins in the tra­di­tion­al calyp­so gath­er­ings, where every singer had some­thing to present and defend, while care­ful­ly shap­ing their appear­ance, move­ments, and lyri­cal skill.

In the same way, it is dif­fi­cult to ful­ly under­stand the enthu­si­asm of sound sys­tem participants—DJs, selec­tors, sound engi­neers, and the crowd—without being famil­iar with the leg­endary sto­ry­line of ”Rock­ers.” So, as with any art form, an artist can­not ignore the tra­di­tions and devel­op­ments of the field they work with­in if they desire to achieve a sat­is­fac­to­ry result.

And I believe the same applies to the audi­ence attend­ing a dance. When all these ele­ments are deeply root­ed in the cul­ture and present in its many lay­ers, peo­ple expe­ri­ence it more ful­ly. Even if the feel­ing is only intu­itive, they sense – just like I did when I first encoun­tered the genre – that there is much more to it than just a momen­tary enter­tain­ment, more to dive into, more to explore.

Reggae and sound system culture can still be very male-dominated spaces. How has your experience been as a female artist moving through this world?

When I start­ed select­ing at the dances, there were few­er female rep­re­sen­ta­tives in that field, but you can’t for­get the pro­lif­ic women artists who still have an immense res­o­nance in the reg­gae sound sys­tem cul­ture, like Sis­ter Nan­cy, Sis­ter Car­ol, Lady Ann and many more. So I wouldn’t say it was too hard to step in a field that then had been dom­i­nat­ed by men, because there were female role mod­els to look up to.

Maybe it’s because the women become moms at some point, and then they are more lim­it­ed in all that has to do with attend­ing the venues. I think that many social activ­i­ties are dom­i­nat­ed my man for that rea­son, except of course the ones that deal with top­ics con­cern­ing women in par­tic­u­lar.

In times of algorithms and fast digital content, your artwork still feels deeply connected to physical culture – posters, vinyl, printed graphics, hand-made aesthetics. Why does that tactile side still matter to you?

I couldn’t enjoy an art­work unless it has some rela­tion to its cul­tur­al sur­round­ings. So I wouldn’t cre­ate an art­work that would be based just on a shal­low imi­ta­tion of the genre’s stereo­types. It is get­ting into the depths of the ori­gins and tra­di­tion that moves me most when work­ing on any type of cre­ation, whether it’s an album cov­er, or a poster illus­tra­tion, or an orig­i­nal art­work, or an essay.

As for the phys­i­cal con­nec­tion to the art­work, it is impor­tant main­ly because it gives me more free­dom to cre­ate and less tech­ni­cal­i­ties to deal with. For exam­ple, if I want to draw a water­col­or, oil or an acrylic paint­ing, I’d rather spend my time mas­ter­ing the phys­i­cal medi­um, than hunt­ing for the dif­fer­ent dig­i­tal brush­es in search for the one that would give ”the real watercolor/oil/acrylic effect”. I also don’t like the LED light being up in my eyes the whole day, so I pre­fer the paper, or can­vas. The only dig­i­tal option that fas­ci­nates me real­ly is the ani­ma­tion, since the tools avail­able make it more acces­si­ble, so any chance I get to explore that – I’m in. Rather than that, all that has to do with the tech­ni­cal image edit­ing and get­ting it print ready, is my least favorite part (although it is nice to see the fin­ished work).

Where do you see reggae and sound system artwork evolving in the next years? Is there something younger artists should reconnect with?

I will give you an Hegelian – or per­haps Freudi­an – answer, just because I think it suits your ques­tion best. Any form of real devel­op­ment con­tains in it its own pre­cur­sor, even if that pre­cur­sor is no longer phys­i­cal­ly present. Devel­op­ment is an enveloped poten­tial that has been real­ized – mean­ing that it was always there, exist­ing as a spir­it that dri­ves it toward real­iza­tion. So any kind of event occur­ring is a con­se­quence of a sub­con­scious dri­ve that’s been siz­zling there since the begin­ning of times.

Con­sid­er­ing that reg­gae is a social com­men­tary form of cul­tur­al expres­sion, it’s con­stant­ly being affect­ed by the spir­it of human­i­ty as a whole. That under­ly­ing cur­rent defines it, and being affect­ed rec­i­p­ro­cal­ly. My hope is that the spir­it of the more humane nature will pre­vail, and that this spe­cif­ic genre of con­tent will some­how over­come the deter­min­ism of the aggres­sive and destruc­tive instincts – or at least tran­scend the clichés that per­pet­u­al­ly inflict its claims in var­i­ous forms. So we will see some pro­duc­tive devel­op­ment in reg­gae and sound sys­tem art­work.

Out of all the posters, covers and projects you created so far – is there one piece that still feels especially close to your heart? And why?

It’s hard to tell real­ly. I like some of my ear­li­er works and some of the lat­er ones, but it’s hard to tell which one is my favorite. There is one that I have enjoyed in par­tic­u­lar, that I made for RAS records’ ”My Cup Run­neth Over” back cov­er sleeve. The ref­er­ence was Doc­tor Dread’s vision of recre­at­ing the icon­ic Rolling Stones ”Beg­gars Ban­quet” inlay bonus pic­ture, with the leg­endary orig­i­nal Wail­ers crew, and U Roy, who’s rid­ing the icon­ic Wail­ers’ rid­dims in the album. I real­ly had fun with reimag­in­ing the scene, while try­ing to fol­low the style of this Renais­sance influ­enced pho­to. Since the orig­i­nal pho­to­graph is rather dark, you can’t see all of the objects in the room, and it was fun brain­storm­ing with Dr. Dread about the var­i­ous homages to reg­gae cul­ture that would replace the ele­ments of the orig­i­nal image.

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Check out Ellen G’s extensive portfolio of artwork here.

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