Aliens, OAPs and brutalism inspire intricate hand drawn wallpapers by Angela Groundwater
Before turning her talents to wallpaper design, Angela Groundwater trained as an animator and worked in film postproduction. “I wanted to get back to making stories and using pencils because I was working exclusively on computers,” she says. “It seemed like such an obvious thing to put stories into wallpapers. It was exciting. To produce an animation might take a year – a wallpaper can take around a month.” Her custom made wallpapers combine storytelling and intricate illustration that work as a texture and an artwork.
Her first collaboration working with interior designer Lady Ray saw her produce two designs for the Jackdaw and Star pub in Homerton, London . “We took the literal influences – the name of the pub and the Victorian architecture – and decided on an arts and crafts style,” says Angela. “We discussed mother nature and I was inspired by the anatomical Venus, a 19th Century concept that was used to educate society about anatomy.” Her intricate design replaces the Venus’ organs with jewels being delivered by jackdaws. The second design, for the dining room of the pub, abstracts the concept further with the Venus used to frame a hung pheasant and the tools of the hunt.
Another pair of designs was produced for Age UK, titled Lovely OAP Ladies of East London and Houndstooth OAP Gents of East London they depict the elderly people who frequent the drop in centres the charity runs in Hackney. “I wanted to celebrate these people. Again, the design is content and narrative driven,” she says. Designing a wallpaper relies on repetition and rhythm to create textures across a surface. The designs have to work at both a micro and macro scale. “All the wallpapers start with a mood board and a discussion of style, then I develop a storyline from that,” Angela says. “It’s trial and error to get the pattern right. You have to address traditional pattern making so that its not too overpowering, the story is hidden in the pattern. I have endless pattern books that I reference. So for the old men, I started with the houndstooth, then put the portraits into it.”
Angela has also started work on a new set of patterns inspired by brutalist architecture, aliens and utopian ideals. The first in the series is inspired by the architecture of Erno Goldfinger and the aliens of the 1973 animation Fantastic Planets. The next in the series is inspired the architecture of the Barbican centre. “It’s an interest I have," she says of this change in direction. "I hadn’t done something geometric, everything has been quite Victorian and decorative until now.”
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Owen joined It’s Nice That as Editor in November of 2015 leading and overseeing all editorial content across online, print and the events programme, before leaving in early 2018.