Carey Armstrong-Ellis Works

Carey Armstrong-Ellis

Medium: Oil

Subject: Toys and random everyday objects

Style: Realistic

Inspirations: Jim Henson and Edward Gorey, as well as folks like Adam Rex and Lane Smith. Contemporary artists: Sydney Bella Sparrow, Sean Beavers, Teresa Fischer, Otto Lang, and Jonathan Queen

Notable Exhibitions:  The Gallery at 100 Market Street, Portsmouth, NH, Lucy's Art Emporium in Dover, NH. Abacus Craft Gallery in Portland ME, PS Galleries, Ogunquit ME and Dallas TX, Muskingum College, New Concord OH, York Public Library, York ME, The Kennedy Gallery, Portsmouth NH

Memberships/Societies: Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators

Education: Earlham College in Richmond, IN - majored in biology

After completing graduate studies in biology and zoology, Carey started her artistic career painting lighthouses on lobster buoys. Following that stint, she began creating off-beat fiber pieces using animals, vegetables, and humans (sort of) as subject matter. This work is shown nationwide.

In 1999, she decided to try her hand at illustration based on a story she’d written coupled with her daughter’s obsessive collecting habit. Carey turned to paper and paint for the first time, and Harry N. Abrams, Inc., picked up her work and released it to the public in 2002. She continues to write, illustrate and publish. Carey’s illustrations, using gouache and colored pencil or acrylics, are quite humorous, “the darker and more skewed the better,” she says. 

More recently, Carey's been dabbling in oils, setting up toys and other objects gleaned from her own, somewhat obsessive, collecting habit. She imagines what her toys might be doing while she’s not around - going on adventures, attacking one another, trying to escape from her over-crowded studio, etc., and paints them for your visual and visceral pleasure.