Elsa Dax

Background

Elsa Dax was born in Paris, and educated at the Sorbonne where she gained an Master of Arts in cinema, Russian art studies, Constructivism and Suprematism.

Education

University of Paris.

Career

Major themes in her work are myth, legend and fairytale. In 1994, she worked as a production assistant for the film Beyond the Clouds, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. In 1995 she was a librarian in the Pompidou Centre.

In 1996 she was a television production assistant at the Musee Doctorate"Orsay for the film Whistler, an American in Paris, directed by Edwige Kertes.

In 1997, she was a production cinema assistant at the Ciné Lumière, French Institute, South Kensington, London, and the following year a television encoder and editor for Xtreme Information Limited. From 1997 to 1998, she rented a 3 sq metre room in a convent, containing just a bed, a small cupboard and a tap.

She spent her time there painting, "and I was very happy". In 1999, she worked as an editor at the Cannes Advertisement Festival.

In 2000, she joined the Stuckists, the anti-conceptual art movement co-founded by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson.

She also took part in other demonstrations in subsequent years, and has participated in may international Stuckist shows. She promoted the second Paris Stuckist show in 2005. In 2005, she illustrated a children"s book

In 2006, the Tarot Museum in Bologna acquired a Tarot deck, which she had designed in 1999.

Dax was one of the ten "leading Stuckists" in the Go West exhibition at Spectrum London gallery in October 2006. In 2008, she was the first signatory a petition to the prime minister asking him not to approve Sir Nicholas Serota as Tate director

She spends her time divided between Camden in London and Paris. She is now a full-time artist.

As well as painting her own work, she is also a collector of other Stuckist paintings by Ella Guru, Charles Thomson, Bill Lewis, Philip Absolon, Remy Noe and Ruth Stein.

Dax said that she chose her themes of myths, legends and fairytales as "I find reality terribly sad and cruel. I need to escape to another dimension," and that her style has been likened to Chagall"son She respects the force of nature.

Research for a painting is a combination of academic books on the subject and infant picture books, which leads to a few weeks" mental preparation for the main elements.

The first part of the painting is the central character, around which other images evolve in an imaginative process to "discover images like you might discover figures in a cloud." lieutenant takes her three months to complete the painting. She has said of her work:.

Achievements

• She first exhibited with them in their The Real Turner Prize Show at the Pure, Shoreditch, London, in that year, and participated in their first demonstration outside Tate Britain against the Turner Prize. In 2004, she was one of the fourteen "founder and featured" artists in The Stuckists Punk Victorian held at the Walker for the Liverpool Biennial.

Membership

In 2001 she founded the Paris Stuckists and organised the Stuckist Vernissage (Stuckist Paintings) the first Paris show of the Stuckists at the Musee d"Adzak: this included the artist Stella Vine (later made famous by Charles Saatchi), who at that time was a member of the Stuckist group.