We’re pleased to announce that the work of Ailsa Munro is now available at Enter Gallery. Munro is a London-based textile designer and digital artist who specialises in crafting fantasy landscapes from organic shapes and forms, which evoke the sprawling wildness of the natural world.

In today’s blog, we’re revealing a little more about this exciting new artist and her collection, plus we dive into her creative process to learn how the magic happens.

A sense of abundance

Munro was compelled to create her first print collection during the instability of the pandemic. The collection is the artist’s response to the ‘confinement and limitations of lockdown in the city’, and is inspired by the houseplants and walks in nature that brought her joy at such a tumultuous time.

In the collection, Munro employs her talents as a pattern designer to consider how her canvas is populated. She masterfully imbues each piece with a sense of abundance, with thick foliage tumbling across every surface.

Reminiscent of the work of French post-impressionist, Henri Rousseau, each artwork combines the chaotic energy of the jungle with the serenity of the lone houseplant, and explores the tensions that arise between the natural world and our urban environment.  

Careful construction

There are a number of interesting steps that Munro employs in the creation of each of her flora and fauna wonderlands. Munro tells us:

‘Influenced by my approach to textile design I start out by creating separate elements. For these works I loosely sketched stylised flowers, leaves, stems and animals and used gouache paint to fill them with smooth gradients of colour. I tried to emphasise the shadows on the leaves to make them feel more like elements in a dream. The motifs were then digitised and arranged with precision into balanced yet chaotic compositions.’  

While each of Munro’s compositions radiate with the frenetic energy of the natural world, the process that goes into creating the chaos is decidedly more measured. After digitising her paintings, Munro diligently sets about placing each leaf, insect and petal with complete precision.

Next, she works on creating a sense of depth and balance via clever use of shadow, perspective and soft focus, and finishes by scattering small details throughout designed to surprise and delight.

You can view a complete collection of Ailsa Munro's artworks here.