Charles Ellis was born in 1960 in Mirfield, West Yorkshire and studied Fine Art at Batley College of Art and Design and later as a mature student at Saint Martin's School of Art, London. He was a founder member of the seminal punk rock band 'The Jerks!' and now lives in Crouch End, North London.
In 1992, Charles formed the arts group collective, The Dashwood Arts Society with fellow artist Allan Hardcastle. The group is still going strong to this day.
In 2013 his self portrait, 'Myself Looking Back', was selected for the prestigious Ruth Borchard exhibition at Kings Place, Kings Cross and from 2014 to 2018 he showed five years consecutively at the Underdog Gallery, Bermondsey in the Punk Rock and Roll Art Show with fellow punk musicians/artists Gaye Advert, Charlie Harper, Spizz, Keith Levine and Knox from the Vibrators. He held his first solo exhibition, 'Presence', at the Peggy Jay Gallery in Hampstead, London in 2017. This was followed in 2021 by his second solo show, 'Present', at Lauderdale House in Highgate.
He says of his work, ' As well as my large life studies of the human figure, my work is essentially abstract expressionist. I see my paintings as interpretations of nature using clouds, rain, sky, waterfalls etc as inspiration, a starting point. Every painting is like a journey that starts as an imagined idea and eventually reaches a conclusion when the completed image resolves itself.'
