Ed Cheverton Rediscovers the Lost Paradise of Childhood

Artist and illustrator Ed Cheverton loves creating things with his hands. A creator of sorts, his work includes collage, comics, toys and more, with clients like TATE Kids, Air France Magazine and Family Store.

“I’ve been making pictures and art for as long as I can remember, but I guess I started pursuing it as a career after I left school […] and did a degree in Illustration at the University of Brighton,” shared the Bristol-based artist with Visual Melt. “I feel very privileged in that I’ve always known what I wanted to do (make art) and so I have been working towards it all my life. Even though I studied Illustration and still work a lot as an Illustrator, I tend to classify myself as an artist and maker.”

Play is an essential part of his artistic process. “Making art is one of the funnest things I can imagine, and that is mainly due to how much play can be introduced into art making,” he says. “It can be very easy to slip into a routine or a method of working that’s comfortable and reliable (something I’m very guilty of at times). Having as much play with a project as possible can usually produce outcomes you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.”

When he’s not playing with his art-making, Cheverton loves to read comics, listen to jazz, and watch Star Trek. “For the past twelve years or so I’ve had a very strong interest in Jazz music and so I made a lot of work about that, and I was largely inspired by jazz as a student,” he adds. “More recently, I realised what intrigued me the most was the really free, improvised and expressive aspects of the music itself, rather than the style or visual representation of it. This has kind of evolved into me being more interested in making work about these abstracted ideas, and in a very roundabout way led me into becoming obsessed with wonders of space exploration.”

Enter his child-like worlds in the gallery below.