ALL: Master Collection List
Nationality
Dutch
Preview
Date of Work
2020
Medium
Acrylic, oil, gilding on canvas
Signature
Bottom right
Height
30"
Width
30"
Depth
1 1/2"
Collection/Provenance
The Chester Fritz Library Collection
Status
On Display: 3rd Floor
Location
Chester Fritz Library
Artist Bio
Elise Eekhout (b. 1976) is a Dutch contemporary artist whose work explores the intersection of painting, graphic design, and language. Educated at St. Joost School of Art in Breda, she spent more than twenty years as a graphic designer before transitioning to a full-time fine art practice in 2020. Working with acrylic paint, gold and silver leaf, and layered text, Eekhout creates luminous compositions that investigate memory, transformation, and humanity's relationship with nature. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in private collections across Europe and beyond.
Additional Information
Rows of trees in a row, showing their roots with metallic writing across them. This piece is part of the Elise Eekhout's "Forests Series."
From the artist's website:
This painting is inspired by the book “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel. In the summer of 2021 this painting was exhibited in multiple exhibitions in India.
“[…] The trees remained. In fact, they grew to be a forest. […] The trees were beautiful. They were like none I had ever seen before. […] I blinked deliberately, expecting my eyelids to act like lumberjacks. But the trees would not fall. I looked down. I was both satisfied and disappointed with what I saw. The island had no soil. […] The bark was greyish green in colour, thin and smooth, and soft enough that I could mark it with my fingernail. […] The head of the tree had the lovely full roundness of a mango tree, but it was not a mango. I thought it smelled somewhat like a lote tree, but it wasn’t a lote either. Nor a mangrove. Nor any other tree I had ever seen. All I know was that it was beautiful and green and lush with leaves. […]” (from chapter 92 of “Life of Pi”, by Yann Martel).
https://eliseeekhout.nl/product/nomangrove-01/
Condition
Excellent
Rights
Images are provided for educational purposes only and may not be reproduced for commercial use. Images may be protected by artist copyright. A credit line is required to be used for any public non-commercial educational purpose. The credit line must include, “Image courtesy of the University of North Dakota.”