line van Dam from Amsterdam (the Netherlands), better known with her pseudonymous Zeloot, creates illustrations that are hard to describe. Attempts at classifying her work has included language like Gaudy Colored Psychedelics; Hybrid Polychromatic Creatures and Amorphous Hallucinatory Monsters. She studied painting at art school in Amsterdam before leaving to go to work on a farm in Europe. After discovering the world of U.S. comics and cartoon, she started to make posters and t-shirts. With controlled confusion, her images combine nostalgic illustration and cutting-edge graphics; trough lettering and design blend into a neo-psychedelic pop marked by the 60-70’s, her unbridled graphics revisit best psychedelic posters from San Francisco rock music scene.
Eline says about her work: “I am not sure but I think it must’ve been Liberatore, Moebius and Robert Crumb that got me drawing again after several years of farming in middle-of-nowhere around Europe. I was never really allowed to read comics when I was a kid so I was very old (26 years) when I first discovered underground comics and somehow I felt I’d finally found the perfect synthesis of social criticism and “art” (or rather “graphics”) without the “pointing finger. I started obsessively collecting and reading the comics of Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, David Cooper and the Hernandez brothers (PALOMAR from Gilbert Hernandez is one of my top favourites)etc. I wasted a lot of time in making comics that never had a finishing line, discovering that rather than being a good story-writer it was the act of drawing lines that excited me more than anything. At some point I was asked to do a poster for a local venue and from there I got totally fixated on posters. I especially like the idea of seeing the street as a gallery and the music as a form through which to express myself. I am always jealous of people that make 10 drawings a day…I don’t work like that… I spend hours and hours at trying to get the right image on the right feeling…and I do lay a lot awake.”
Her first monograph has been published by Editions Michel Lagarde in June 2010
