12 Facts About Ella Guru

Ella Guru was born on Ella Drauglis; May 24,1966 and is an American painter and musician living in Hastings, East Sussex, England.

Ella Guru was a member of Mambo Taxi and the Voodoo Queens.

Ella Guru did a commercial art course at Fort Hayes Career Center and attended Columbus College of Art and Design, which she left because of "all the conceptual crap".

Ella Guru graduated in fine arts from Ohio State University, where she received the Visual Arts Award.

From 1990 to 1991, Guru travelled to Africa and India, then for the next year lived an Islamic lifestyle in an Algerian household in Islington, London, where she was a waitress in a Mexican restaurant.

Ella Guru had lunch in New York with Quentin Crisp, who said she was "weird".

Ella Guru's pseudonym is taken from a Captain Beefheart song on the album Trout Mask Replica.

Ella Guru has stated her concern for ability and technique, and her admiration for the work of Old Masters, although they are not necessarily her model for painting: she appreciates untrained artists who show invention in their work.

Ella Guru spent three years painting life models at art college, which gave her much of the grounding for her approach to art.

Ella Guru's paintings take anywhere between two days and two years to complete, and usually start by her "going out and getting pissed with my friends", when she takes the photographs which provide the initial ideas, although the images she works from are often "very bad, dark, fuzzy photos", necessitating subsequent real life studies as well as imaginative interpretation.

Ella Guru has talked about an irrational obsession with shapes, such as those of wigs, which have always fascinated her.

Ella Guru's painting The Queen's Speech had its origin in Pennsylvania in the house of a friend, with whom Guru has collaborated for a number of years in setting up suitable scenes for photographs by dressing people in costume.