We don’t realise how many incredibly talented and creative souls that share the same town/city/state as us. I came across Chloe R Everett’s instagram (@honey.possum) and I was overwhelmed by the raw talent. There is something so freeing about her work, the raw edges, and textured brush patterns, it isn’t pristine and fine lined and that’s what I love most about it. As someone who is overcome by perfectionism and anxiety, the illusion of creating in a carefree way gives me comfort and inspires me to let go a little more.
Chloe recently had her first commission since delving deeper into her art journey with Fanny Adams Vintage—taking denim jackets and gracing their backs with her artwork—and there is only more projects from her to come!
I got together with Chloe a couple weeks back and she was kind enough to indulge me as I took some photos of her work space as she told me a little snippet of her art story.
“I would say I’ve always been doing art, it’s kind of the thing i’ve always been consistently good at throughout any kind of schooling, it became a thing where people said ‘oh Chloe’s the art person’. I mean, I always knew that I don’t want to do something that’s conventional—you know—when it gets to later education, to year twelve and eleven, you’re just like ‘oh what do I do?’ and I naturally fell into wanting to do art, to get better at it and take it more seriously. I’ve only recently actually started completing finalised artworks. I’ve done a lot of trash, just a lot of unfinished, incomplete stuff throughout my entire life and it’s only been the last two years that I’ve been approaching my art with a more fine-tuned mindset, and a kind of completion mindset, with the idea that they are actually worth something and that its valuable—more to myself than anything. And so, it’s been a very independent art journey. It’s only now that I’ve been able to do interactive projects, like with Fanny Adams and with my Drag Queen project, and it’s only now that I’ve decided to take myself more seriously and continue this self development.
Fanny contacted me and was basically like ‘hey, i like your stuff’ and I was like ‘cool this sounds amazing, thank you for liking what I’m doing!’ To be approached by her was a bit of a ‘oh wow’ moment, so I was instantly in on it. The way I approached it was—I knew I wanted to do portraits because that’s what I’m good at—but I knew I had to make it poppy and commercial and something that people would want to buy because I was selling a product, and I never to that point had sold a commercial product. So I did like, Priscilla, David Bowie and I did the Shining, which were all very pop culture icons and Fanny sold them. She was really supportive and she’s really good at engaging you with the entire group of amazing artists. It was my first experience so I was really happy that she was so welcoming and it was so casual, it was less of like ‘oh this is a big project’ and more of a ‘I’m just doing some more art’.
I’ve never done shows, it’s weird because sometimes I feel people think I’m all that but I feel like I’m so nothing, I feel so insignificant because I don’t have a—in my opinion—a wide enough range of projects yet. At the moment I’m working on two drag pieces, two local queens, Blair and Luna. They are personal pieces, I conjured up the project myself, it kind of came to me and I was like ‘that’s a cool concept’ the kind of subversion of something so normal, like brushing your teeth mixed with something so bizarre and beautiful like drag. Once i’m done i’m going to message lots of galleries and see if someone wants to house them, my gut hope is someone wants to have them somewhere.”
Quillligraphy 