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Marie Louise Elshout, Delft 1967, followed her education at the Willem de Kooning Academy and Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, she also followed a semester at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, USA.
She uses many techniques and different materials to draw on canvas often reflecting and trying to capture the darker aspects of mankind, expressed in meticulously crafted works of art.
“Marie Louise Elshout has been working for years on a consistent oeuvre of drawings and paintings in which delicate, fragile figures appear. It has often been described as referring to the occult, the darker side of existence. I gather that. But I also believe that there is a positive side to that mystical aura. When everyday reality offers no way out, Elshout opens the door for us to a new, unknown space. To change into a new or different person. Marie Louise looks inward, at the emotional world and the mysterious places of the imagination. It is remarkable that in a time where superficiality of social media confuses us with what is real and what is fake, Elshout's figures focuses on their inner world, which may feel more real than the one outside. Her work is an invitation to become silent, and dares you to descend into the depths of your feelings and thoughts. Her figures often do it already. They retreat behind their long hair, rarely looking at you. Hurricane – that's what many drawings have been called – does it stir behind the closed eyes?”
Mariette Dölle, directeur Nieuwe Kerk Amsterdam, 2022
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