Elisabeth Lecourt

Years ago when Elisabeth Lecourt read in the newspaper about a six year old girl who´s father was going to prison, she folded a child´s dress out of a London map, with the prison centered on the heart. This is the sad story behind the series of dresses she has been creating since. These enchanting little garments turn out to have an inherent ambiguity with serious backgrounds.

Elisabeth’s paintings, done in very lightly...

Years ago when Elisabeth Lecourt read in the newspaper about a six year old girl who´s father was going to prison, she folded a child´s dress out of a London map, with the prison centered on the heart. This is the sad story behind the series of dresses she has been creating since. These enchanting little garments turn out to have an inherent ambiguity with serious backgrounds.

Elisabeth’s paintings, done in very lightly applied washes of oil color, are about the joy she had as a child. “I can recall the pure pleasure I felt when being in a garden or playing. It´s like nothing else. When my little daughter plays with dolls she doesn’t even hear me,” these are the feelings her art is all about. She also draws relations between the body of a woman and that of a child and their fragility. She adds, “I learnt much about the canon of beauty when I was at school with disabled children, e.g. without arms. This left its marks on me and gave me another point of view.”

In Elisabeth Lecourt’s work you often find bows. “The bows expression is very childlike, but feminine and extravagant at the same time. It shows off. It’s a knot as well, like trouble. You want to undo or keep it”. She resumes, “in the end, it is all about growing up.”