Marie Louise Elshout ( Delft, 1967) studied at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and graduated in painting and printmaking, during her study she followed a semester at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, USA, her education was concluded at the Piet Zwart Intstitute, Rotterdam, where she studied mixed media.
She exhibited her work in several musea and galleries in the Netherlands and abroad, amongst them are the USA, England, France, Belgium and Germany.
In her hometown Rotterdam she showed her work at The Kunsthal, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, TENT. and Kunstinstitute Melly ( formerly known as Witte de With Contemporary Art Space.)
Her work is included in the Caldic collection, Stedelijk Museum Gouda, Kevin Krumnikl collection, Germany and several private collections, among them are the director of Stedelijk Museum Zwolle and Stedelijk Museum Zutphen.
Her work has been selected for the Royal Award for Modern Painting in 2003 and she was nominated for the Jacob Hartog prize in 2016.
Marie Louise Elshout’s work is distinguished by an authentic combination of drawing and painting, in her canvases she portrays the ambivalent relationships between human beings and animals, leaders and followers.
She positions her elusive, hybrid creatures in a historical 19th Century setting, inspired by Daguerreotype photography, as a stage in which the landscape functions as the protagonist.
In her meticulously crafted works the emphasis is not on human characteristics in animals but rather on the folklore of men, superstition, the tales and the sometimes darker side of traditions and rituals.
Her paintings always reveal a certain beauty due to a mixture of sepia tones and vibrant colours, the invitate you to share in her fascination, create awareness and perhaps find more connection with Nature.