About Elise Ishigami

I was born in France and spent my childhood in Ivory Cost, West Africa. My paintings, inspired from the Senegalese “sous-verre” (reverse glass painting) is a technique dating from the late nineteenth century that has become very popular over the time in Senegal. It’s a really fun painting technique as it requires painting backwards to create the work, which is the opposite of what a painter would do on canvas. The countries I visited, the people I met and the diverse cultures I discovered during my stays in Africa, Asia and Europe are my source of inspiration. I usually paint on windows and broken objects found in antique shops and really enjoy giving a second life to those old-broken objects. My paintings are narrative and naive, depicting aspects of the domestic life, social events, and portraits with sharp and vibrant colors.