DRAWING A CROWD: Monsters and punk gigs with Rochester illustrator Ecamoga
“I always try to include grotesque things in my art, even if they’re really subtle”
There was an era when cartoons were a mixture of comedic violence, innuendo and grotesque-looking close-ups. Looking back, it was shows like Ren & Stimpy that began the crossing of boundaries from childhood into teenhood, bleeding into the worlds of MTV and its adolescent reviewing duo Beavis and Butthead.
Celebrity Deathmatch was another late-night show that blurred the lines as popular culture genres and platforms spliced together. It’s probably fair to say that a lot of the cartoons that were made in the 90s and early 2000s wouldn’t get made now - some for fair reason. But it was certainly a time when the boundaries of youth shows were pushed to the limit. Rochester artist Ernesto Camilo Moisei-Gallardo, or Ecamoga as he is known professionally, was fuelled by the vibrant characters of these shows and has taken his passion for creating imaginative, and sometimes scary, worlds into his illustrations.
Ernesto moved from the US to Romania (where his dad is from) as a child before heading to Kent at age 12 and as a result threw himself into cartoons.
My parents worked, so I would be in front of the TV or have my head in comics,” he says. “And it kind of raised me, in a way. That era of cartoons as well, there was just something about it that you don’t really see now. Every frame was a painting and the stories, even if they were goofy as hell, had really good narratives.
“Moving around a lot and going through different types of education systems, like in Romania, art wasn’t that accessible,” he says. “There wasn’t any money to go towards materials or lessons or anything, it was a very loose thing. But I was still finding myself drawing on bits of scrap paper and using whatever I could.
“And then when I came here it opened my mind up to all these different possibilities, experimenting with materials.”
But it wasn’t until lockdown when Ernesto started to hone his art, realising that it could become something more than just a hobby.
“It was just something I wanted to do as a career ever since I could remember,” he says. “That was the time to kind of explore and learn how to develop a style.”
Looking at the Ecomoga style, there is a lot of influence taken from the 90s/00s cartoon era.
“I loved Ed, Edd n Eddy - all their schemes and the DIY element to it,” says Ernesto. “Also, Courage the Cowardly Dog - that was insane. I don’t know if you've watched that, but it could be really scary. They used mixed media a lot with it, which kind of gives it this really eerie vibe, like something is out of place. There’s these villains or monsters that the dog has to fight. They’re just actually just kind of otherworldly.”
Ernesto takes part in Bad Guys Club, a social-media-led cartoon project held each October in which illustrator Craig Gleason sets a theme or villainous character every day for a month and artists around the world come up with their own version and back story, which are then displayed to the community.
“There’s loads of cool artists that actually take part in it,” says Ernesto. “That's the main thing for me, getting to connect with all these really talented artists and being inspired by each other.”
Drawing villains or monsters is where Ernesto gets his most joy.
“I always try to include grotesque things in my art, even if they’re really subtle. I love playing with flesh - that sounds really weird, but making flesh look bubbly or boily or imperfect.”
One place that Ecomoga has seen his art recognised is on gig posters. Along with a couple of friends, Ernesto founded the Big Cheese Co, a business dedicated to putting on and promoting live events in art and music - predominantly in Kent.
“We’re putting on shows and doing all that the back work to promote them, access grassroots venues and get local artists involved, and to keep everything fairly affordable for the audience,” says Ernesto. “But also to make sure to pay the artists as much as we can because they obviously put a lot of work into their craft.”
The Big Cheese Shows have appeared at The Nag’s Head and Poco Loco in the Old High Street Intra and Three Sheets To The Wind Analogue Music in Rochester, The Ballroom in Canterbury and The Oast in Rainham as well as The Amersham Arms and Dublin Castle in London. Often they have included free prize draws for art and, even more often, they are punky, energetic and alternative shows featuring some of the county’s best up-and-coming outfits.
“I’ve been in bands and we always used to get f**ked over by promoters,” says Ernesto. “They would take so much money and barely do any work in terms of marketing - they wouldn’t even create a decent poster. This is what launched me to start making really cool posters, because I just know that it makes it look like these people care and that they’re willing to put all this effort into a unique thing. It’s important.”
INFO: www.ecamoga.com/
