I enjoyed listening to Easty self-reflect. Easty is a lovely human, who’s passion was oozing out. I could feel it as she spoke through our zoom call. You could tell she was confident in her steeze and was happy to share her journey and process, one that might seem lucky but is completely from skill, determination and hustle. As we spoke for over an hour, I will do my best to recap.
To note: I will probably change tenses 1000 times, so please if you are a literate person, be ready to squirm.
During this interview I will speak about her path to getting where she is, moments in her life that changed and challenged, and the dirty C word we are all over and I’m not talking about c**t. I guess now it’s where to start as I listen to my own voice on this recording and squirm. There is so much I could write as I was constantly amazed by this woman as I think I said “fuck yes”, “fuck yea” around 20 times, in total awe and feeling inspired by her every word.
I’ll speak about Ella, the other side of Easty. She has always been interested in visual art, with her focus when she was younger on hyper-realism. She liked sketching faces and trying to get them as realistic as possible. As she got older, she met a boy. This boy lived in Sydney which made her decision to move from Brissy to Syd a little easier. It broke my heart to then hear that her new love interest was abusive.
“Shitty times are the times you figure it out, if you give yourself the chance and permission to learn from the experience”.
What goes down, must come up right? After riding the lows of this relationship came a re-birth.
At this time she loved where she was working, although it wasn’t her passion and decided that in 2019, she was going to give her art a chance of succeeding. She then decided to find herself her own space to let her creative juices flow.
She was now surrounding herself amongst surf culture, and surely not long after, Easty Beasty was born. Which she is now doing full time.
Easty Beasty was born through long nights, sad and heartbroken, drinking red wine. She said, one night she decided to just let the creative juices flow and “draw whatever the fuck I want, I don’t care if it makes sense, I’m just going to draw for me”. This came from not a place of not being supported but an internal feeling of anger. This night produced the first product, a surfboard sticker and from here, the rest of her work just flowed.
“The second I gave my art room to grow, it came up and met me”.
When I asked if there was any particular moment she knew 'Easty Beasty' was growing she mentioned that there wasn’t one in particular but she acknowledges the feeling of gratification from her peers that she admires but also constantly feels grateful for where she is at and enjoying the ride. You can tell from speaking to her how level-headed she is and that she takes her successes as an opportunity to grow.
Easty takes inspiration from a range of talented people within the art and surf world. Rae Klein, (this artist posts every day on social media, which wow?) Ben Styer, Michelle Nguyen (@dirtymuttdaddy), Hilma AF Klimt, Georgia O’Keefe, Craig Anderson and Mikey February, just to name a few. Easty shared her love and appreciation for art that depicts the world around us and what is in between? She is a massive believer that ‘stuff’ exists and humans haven’t discovered yet, the big picture you know? She has an open mind and said anything meta-physical, spiritual and cults gave her the tingles. But not to forget the influence of water which you can tell from her artworks while creating work that includes humour,
“because life sometimes is just funny shit”.
Like most people creating, she sometimes runs out of inspiration, when she does, she tries to switch off and try something new. I’m loving that her current hobby is skating around the mellow streets in Bondi and learning the drums which she said is a nice yet super!! difficult challenge as she plays the guitar.
C***D … At the beginning of lockdown in 2020, it was a wild time as she was losing her freelance clients, and no one was hiring. She came to the conclusion that she could ride it out for six months, hoping it will pass, like all of us, right? Who thought it would last this long?
Then. Shit just worked out…
Another person who proves, when things align and are meant to be, they will be.
This time during the current lockdown she is using it as a chance to keep busy and continue to focus on her art, which she mentioned is not prescription at all for anyone, but she felt it’s a nice time to create. Although the big C has impacted her exhibition where she was going to show thirty-five! pieces that were all going to be released on the night, that she mentioned she was ‘hauling arse’ to get done, she is hopeful that they can be shown around somewhere without a lockdown interruption. I enjoy her glass half-full vision as she spoke about COVID, it is refreshing and nice with lots of self-reflection, upward thinking and focusing on some new shit, including some cool fridge magnets which if you follow her on Instagram, look pretty epic and if you are into knick-knacks, these would be the ultimate trinkets.
What sets Easty’s soul on fire?
“it’s a lot of different things, sometimes it's drawing and painting, and I got it right, that is how it looked in my head, or when I get into a happy accident”. She went on to say, it’s the feeling where she has expressed a feeling into her artwork is what gets her going.
The future? Who knows? but maybe?
It could be possible that both styles combine, Ella’s traditional hyper-realism style and Easty Beasty, two polar opposite styles, combining, merging…