Elke Foltz
Elke Foltz is a French abstract painter based in Berlin.
She was born in 1990 in France to a Senegalese mother and a French-German father.
In 2005, Elke studies design in La Souterraine, a small town in Creuse (France), where she graduates with a high-school diploma in 2008 and a graphic design degree in 2010. Elke finds her inspiration in all kinds of art and especially in painting. Her love for bright colors, spontaneity, and authenticity is driven by artists such as Henri Matisse and Basquiat. At the same time, Elke’s mother introduces her to artists from the Senegalese contemporary art scene. She discovers the work of the painters Ndoye Douts and Kré as well as sculptor Ousmane Sow. These artists will be for Elke an anchor to her Senegalese roots and a great source of inspiration.
In 2011, Elke obtained a degree in applied arts in Toulouse. After her studies, she shifted her career path to focus on drawing and painting. From the design, she uses the dimension of fulls and gaps in the composition of an image in order the create a rhythm. At this time she paints abstract landscapes and superimposes line drawings on them. She illustrates life moments and imaginative scenes inspired by chain reactions.
In 2015, Elke seeks to renew herself and her art in a new environment. She travels alone in Berlin to expand her artistic approach toward abstraction. Her artistic vocabulary gives way to color and she gradually puts drawing aside. Elke discovers abstract artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Julie Mehretu and sees a greater dimension of creation in abstract painting. During the pandemic, in 2020, Elke reflects on her social position as a mixed-race woman artist. She feels the urge to paint in this chaotic atmosphere and find balance. She starts to paint large canvasses also interrogating the place of the mistakes by integrating collages of previous experimentations.
In 2021, Elke collaborates on engaging projects such as the artwork cover for the book “Un chant écarlate” by the Senegalese writer, Mariama Bâ. A book showing the challenges of mixed race marriage, from both side of the main characters. The novel shows an unbalanced love story between two characters with different origins and social backgrounds.
Elke connects herself to nature and her origins and finds inspiration in a search for harmony. Her work expresses what connects us, a search for balance, the place of the mistake, different perspectives and how to find meaning in chaos.
Could you tell us more about your background and how you began creating art?
I studied graphic design and graduated in 2011 in France. After that, I worked as an illustrator between Toulouse and Paris, for several years. However, my artistic journey took a new turn when I moved to Berlin in 2015. I have gradually expanded my art towards abstraction. In 2020, during the pandemic, I felt the urge to connect with my roots and explore on canvas a search for harmony through abstraction.
What does your art aim to say to its viewers?
The search for balance amid chaos is a main theme in my work. I paint impressions of moments, inspired by what connects us, our life paths, and the place of mistakes. But more recently, I have also been observing the impact of time on nature. In one of my recent paintings "Even the Sunflowers no Longer Want to Face the Sun", I explored the various phases of a moment, here pictured by the sunflower. I captured and represented the shapes of the flower and their transformations over time. I’ve found myself drawn deeper into the intricate and delicate beauty of nature's rhythms.
Can you tell us about the process of creating your work? What is your daily routine when working?
I observe colors and textures in my environment, particularly in nature, and reproduce them beforehand to create my color palette. While I am working on a painting, I also experiment at the same time on both paper and canvas, parallel to the main painting. For me, this brings greater freedom to the creative process. I then select cut-outs from my previous experiments on canvas and incorporate them into my final work through collage. This process allows me to step back and reflect on my work in greater depth. My search for balance is not about perfection, it's about the path with all the failures and successes that the creative process can bring, and accepting mistakes to grow as an individual, as part of a whole.
What is the essential element in your art?
Color!
In your opinion, what role does the artist have in society?
The role of an artist, in my opinion, is to share their vision of the world with vulnerability and awareness of themselves, but above all of what surrounds them. Art is a way of sharing other perspectives on life with a vocabulary that is unique to each artist.
