Rylee Hollis uses dreamy watercolour textures to paint cowboy dogs and punk mohawks

Rylee Hollis enjoys being at the “mercy of paint”, especially watercolour paint. Well known for its unique texture and unpredictable nature, this Texas-born and Toronto-based illustrator somehow gets a leash on it, creating semi-airbrushed, dreamy and playful scenes between eccentric characters and luminous colours. Dense with subjects and textures, Rylee’s compositions explode with action and motion – like in The Cartoon Saloon, anthropomorphic animal cowboys drink, play cards and draw their pistols in a beautiful gradient that captures a moment where the dusty saloon is lit up by the firing of a revolver.

Watercolour paint “does as it pleases”, says Rylee – and her paintings do look as if her worlds are moving of their own volition. There’s a wonderful sense of motion in these scenes, whether it’s bouncing arcs of duplicated cards or crowds of people curling around a singer underneath a spotlight, each painting has its own gravitational pull. “The 90s and early 2000s internet webpages are oddly inspiring to me. These time capsules of the internet, with their clunky textures, fluorescent colours, and clumsily maximalist aesthetic, offer a particular charm and sweetness I really adore!” says Rylee, demonstrating this in All My Little Drawings which take the form of 1x1 avatars and Even Though We’re Miles Apart, A Computer Connects Our Hearts!, which appears like an exploded Windows screensaver.

In the painting Smoke Break, Rylee depicts punk hairstyles from wolf cuts to mohawks, but instead of using a different paint or techniques to create hard angular edges, Rylee captures not so much the geometric attitude of punk fashion but the textural attitude. Not just depicting the candy floss spectrum of punk hair colours but also showing how light interacts with their hair, Rylee is always making the best use out of the dreamy quality of water-based paint. “​I don’t like to get bogged down by too much preliminary sketching and planning. If I’m too picky with the details, I lose the tenderness and gestural quality I’d like my work to have,” says Rylee. “Perhaps my work can appear quite childish or silly, but I think holding on to and embracing these qualities is very important!”