• “My work examines impermanence through layered pigment, processes of addition and subtraction, corrosion, and water-driven transformation. Surfaces are constructed through accumulation and erosion, often comprising numerous strata that are partially obscured or altered over time.

    By dispersing pigment rather than applying it directly, I eliminate visible brushwork, allowing material behavior and chance to inform the composition. These surfaces evoke a convergence of time, memory, and matter, drawing from the visual language of oxidized metals, mineral formations, and architectural decay.

    Recurring forms and portals, function as symbols of exchange and transition, suggesting movement between physical and spiritual realms.

    Each work operates as an act of excavation, built, distressed, concealed, and revealed, maintaining a tension between deterioration and endurance.”

  • Elysé Keltner (b. 1987, pronounced Ella-say) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice is informed by Eastern philosophy and shamanic conceptions of impermanence, presence, and transformation. Her work is grounded in an acute sensitivity to material as an active force, and in an understanding of making as both a physical and perceptual act.

    Her visual language is shaped by a background spanning fine art and music. Early experience as a studio hand for a world-renowned Diné painter established a rigorous, process-driven discipline, while her subsequent role as a gallery director informed a sustained awareness of context, spatial relationships, and the conditions through which a work is encountered.

    Keltner’s parallel career as a professional musician within the Blues and Rock traditions continues to inform her practice. Living with synesthesia, she perceives sound as color, movement, and atmosphere — an influence that carries into her visual work through rhythm, tonal structure, and emotional cadence.

    Her practice moves between materially driven abstraction and culturally symbolic imagery. While her Sacred Passages works explore ritual, impermanence, and transformation through layered surfaces and process-based excavation, her Culture in Decay series examines the mythology of American music, cinema, and collective memory through distressed iconography and emotionally charged visual fragmentation.

    Across both bodies of work, archetypal forms function as indices of passage, exchange, and the tension between deterioration and endurance.

    Her work is held in private collections internationally, including Hawaii, Germany, Holland, Sweden, and Japan. Keltner maintains a private studio practice, where her work continues to evolve through an ongoing dialogue between material, perception, sound, and time.

  • 2009
    Santa Fe Indian Market, Santa Fe, NM

    2010
    Native Modern: One + One = Two, Legends Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM
    Girls Inc., Santa Fe, NM
    Santa Fe Indian Market, Santa Fe, NM
    Winter Market, Santa Fe, NM

    2011
    Winter Market, Santa Fe, NM
    Alameda Studio Tour, Albuquerque, NM
    Santa Fe Indian Market, Santa Fe, NM

    2012
    Rio Grande Arts & Crafts Festival, Albuquerque, NM

    2026

    Artwalk Santa Fe: Santa Fe Brewing Annual Fundraiser, Santa Fe, NM