Lauren Elyse’s Instagram page is the kind you stumble upon by chance and linger on. Featuring her illustrations and paintings, it oozes with cool—the kind of cool we need in our life right now. Describing her work as “fragments that swirled themselves together,” Elyse’s sources of inspiration include her own experiences and observations as well as other artists’ work.
“I had an inkling that painting was going to be something I wanted to dedicate all my energy towards around seventeen when I started college,” she relayed in an interview with CreativeFluff Magazine. Based in San Diego, California, she began painting surfboards and skateboards as a teenager, independently at first, and later moving on to collaborate with companies within the industry.
As time went on, surfboards turned into murals, commissioned by local businesses and brands. “Everything really just fell together from there,” she explains. According to Elyse, her work, whether private or commercial, articulates her thoughts and feelings.
But knowing when a piece is finished can be tricky, and generally comes down to looking at it and understanding that one more brush stroke and the whole thing falls apart. “I ask, how easily can I ruin all I’ve built up to this point,” she says. “The end point is something I acknowledge, sometimes ignore, and I’ve been known to pick up older work and continue expanding on them. So I guess nothing really is ever truly finished.”
