Igonyama | Portret of a Lion

Have you ever considered how special it is that we can read? Text is nothing but a series of characters in a row, to which we have assigned meanings. We can experience a whole range of feelings and emotions just by looking at those signs. From an early age, artist Elise Eekhout has been fascinated by letters. When Eekhout looks at letters, she sees beautifully designed figures. What she finds so fascinating is that we don’t or hardly don’t see those signs anymore once we can read. You are immediately transported to the world behind the letters. Based on this fascination, Elise wants to show how text and image intertwine in her head. She does this by making paintings in which she interweaves image and text. The images that conjured up in her head when reading are not razor sharp and well defined. They are freagments, impressions, feelings. That’s why Elise combines multiple layers of coarse strokes with fragments of detailed, fine handwritten texts. Because she writes the texts with metallic foils, the letters reflect the light in a different way each time you walk by. This way the artwork seems to change and lead a life of its own. Elise Eekhout is a graphic designer from origin. She started her own graphic design company during her studies at St. Joost Art School (Breda, The Netherlands). Here too, her fascination for letters and the combination of text and image played a major role. But a few years ago, she decided she wanted to create work that is much closer to herself. That is why Elise is working as a professional artist since 2020. Both the Scryption Museum (Tilburg) and the Meermanno Museum (The Hague) showed her work. In 2021 her work was shown at a number of exhibitions in India. She sells her work both within and outside Europe.