Eloise is a skater and artist

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What do you think about skateboarding, making art and your creative process?

I’ve always seen art and skateboarding as very similar creative outlets – that’s why the two fields cross over in so many areas.

You’re creating something out of nothing in both art and skateboarding, putting a thought into action and making it a physical thing.

And each is completely individual to the skater-artist.

How it can be defined, however, is completely down to the individual. It’s something about that freedom that’s so attractive. My creative process is completely dead without skateboarding. If I don’t skate, I can’t begin to think about painting – the two go hand in hand.

How did you develop your characters?

My characters developed very organically

When I first started mixing drawing and skating together I was just doing realism, so I was just drawing humans as they are.

I quickly realised there wasn’t much room for expression in this style; if I extended a leg or exaggerated an arm it ended up just looking badly drawn.

So I started drawing stick people, which then slowly developed into these blobby silhouette characters that I draw now. Now I can mould them and shape them to be as exaggerated or understated as I would like.

Outside of skateboarding, who inspires you?

I look up to a lot of other artists, living and dead. I’ve always loved impressionism / post-impressionism: Lautrec, Morisot and Monet stand out the most to me.

I’ve recently discovered New York-based artist Ali Miller, and I’m really infatuated with her work – her colour palettes are beautiful. Absolutely genius.

Then I always get inspired by artists who are my friends. Liisa Chisholm and Lucas Beaufort are always inspiring me with their work, although they’re both skaters as well, so does that count as outside of skateboarding?

Where’s your favourite place to skate?

I moved south of the river earlier this year, so I’m going to Deptford skatepark a lot.

I’m also quite near Mudchute, which has always been a favourite. There’s also a curb in Dalston that I’ve been going to for years. It’s barely even a spot, but it’s always stayed dear to my heart.

Who inspires you in skateboarding?

Plenty! I know so many amazing artists / skaters who inspire me endlessly. I’m a big fan of Liisa Chisholm – she rips and makes amazing art and is generally a great human and always inspiring. Lucas Beaufort has and always will be a huge inspiration of mine; I’ve been following his work since I was 17 and I’m still just as big of a fan as back then. He’s been hugely supportive of my career, too. In fact, I’ll be a part of one of his big projects coming up next year, called “The Art Camp”. Very stoked.

My London people who kill it: Georgie Winter, Beth Kerins, Helena Long, Amy Ram, gotta chuck Chroliver in there too. Not so London based: Jenn Soto and Mariah Duran. I mean, them as a pair is just unbeatable. Marisa Dal Santo has always been up there for me. Mike Carroll is also an all time favourite.

I think there’s a clear relationship between skateboarding and making art, the two cultures cross over immensely.

They’re both creative outlets and I know a huge number of the skaters who make art. The two fit well and also can naturally balance each other. I know they do for me! If I don’t skate for a while because of too much work, I feel that my art fucking sucks! Haha.

My friends who skate and also make things inspire me a lot.

Lucas Beaufort’s art is incredible, his work is on another level.

Jocelyn Tam is doing a big project round Europe where’s she’s interviewing people who skate and also create things, it sounds like it’s going crazily well and I’m super stoked for her.

Tom Quigley who does Varial Magazine, its a sick lil mag that I really love, I’m always stoked to see his stuff. Sam Roberts from Brighton just put out issue 5 of his magazine Florecast it’s so, so good, not like any magazine I’ve seen before it’s just really amazing. He done good.

Ben Gore in Brighton as well is always creating amazing amazing stuff, he’s constantly on it. He’s a photographer and also dabbles in illustrative stuff, he just made a series of hip-hop tarot cards that look rad.

There are so many more people I could go on and on but those are the first that come to mind.I always like things that revolve around the community supporting the community so The No Comply Network is right up my alley.

In January 2016, my good friend Tracy Gray did an exhibition in Berlin.

It was a collaborative show between her and I, she’s a photographer, who’s currently supplying me with photos of brutalist style architecture which I painted for the show and we made a zine about the process and the final output.