Elke Reis

Elke Reis is a german artist currently living in Munich. She was always connected to art. As a child she was stunned by the drawings of her father. He was a talented artist but decided not to go into art. Growing up in a poor family under miserable circumstances during the last years of World War II he couldn’t even consider being an artist. But his love and his talent to draw influenced the artist’s live more than she’d thought. For a longtime she was busy with her family and her job as a teacher. But her deep passion for art never diminished. Moving to California with her family was a welcome break to deepen this love. “I felt like walking on a new path, doing a few steps not knowing where it will lead me. I’ve discovered my old love and I nourish it now with all my heart. I realized what I’ve missed for so long – focusing on figure, shape and color, approaching and sculpting the essence of the human being.” Meandering from figurative expressionism to pure formalism her recent work became more and more abstract and reduced. In her actual paintings she explores various nuances of one color hue and the interplay with the light on the canvas. To create work that causes the viewer to stop to reflect is what drives her, to create a pictorial space where one can get lost in perception or even contemplation, to leave behind all distractive, narrative or descriptive content and to experience feelings of tranquility and balance.