Artist Statement

”I have always been fascinated by the portal of time — by what endures, what erodes, and what speaks through the surfaces we leave behind. “If this wall could talk,” I often wonder, “what would it say?” In truth, it already does. Every crack, every patch of rust, every layer of paint whispering beneath another tells a story of life passing through. I find that far more beautiful than perfection — the poetry of deterioration, the quiet language of wear.

In my ongoing series Culture in Decay, I explore the tension between ruin and renewal, between the aged and the immaculate. Corrosive textures — rust, patina, weathered brick, crumbling stucco — coexist with new and reflective elements, hand-painted fragments that shimmer on the surface like ghosts of the present. Together, they form a visual dialogue between what time erodes and what resists it.

For me, decay is not an end state but a conversation — a place where the old world and the new world meet, challenge, and complete one another. I am drawn to the beauty that time creates without permission, and to the way surfaces, like people, carry their histories in plain sight. My work seeks to honor that persistence — to reveal that even in decline, there is grace, rhythm, and rebirth.”


Bio

Elysé is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, and former gallery director whose practice inhabits the intersection of sound, material, and memory. Working primarily in assemblage and mixed media, her work examines cultural entropy — the slow collapse of symbols, myths, and media — and the unexpected rebirth that occurs within that disintegration. Through a language of texture, collage, and decay, she reimagines ruin as revelation.

Her visual vocabulary emerged from a life steeped in art from every angle. She began her career as a studio hand, learning the tactile discipline of materials and the patience of process. Later, as a gallery director, she witnessed how context, curation, and narrative transform the viewer’s relationship to a work. These early experiences gave her a deep respect for the unseen architecture behind creation — the emotional scaffolding that allows a piece to hold meaning.

Parallel to her visual work, Elysé spent years as a professional musician — performing, touring, and collaborating across the Blues and Rock landscape. Music taught her rhythm as a language of truth, improvisation as a form of prayer, and silence as part of the composition. That sensibility now threads through her paintings, which often unfold like visual scores: dynamic, layered, and haunted by the echo of sound.

In her ongoing series Culture in Decay, Elysé explores the tension between permanence and impermanence — between what culture worships and what it forgets. Each work is a kind of excavation: peeling back layers of pop iconography, vintage ephemera, and mythic residue to reveal what still vibrates beneath the cultural dust. Through this process, she exposes how meaning mutates across generations, and how beauty persists even in its corrosion.

Her studio practice bridges intuition and structure, often beginning with fragments — a torn poster, a lyric, a discarded photograph — which she weaves into dense visual compositions. Paint, paper, and found material become strata of lived experience, mirroring the complexity of memory itself. The resulting works feel both ancient and modern, sacred and vandalized — relics of an emotional archaeology still unfolding.

Elysé’s work is held in private collections across the world, including in Hawaii, Germany, Holland, Sweden, and Japan.

Today, from her private studio, she continues to create bodies of work that blur the boundaries between visual art, music, and the poetics of decay. Her pieces invite viewers to look closer, to listen for the quiet hum of what remains — the pulse of culture still beating beneath the ruins.