Elsa Douillard is a French artist currently living in Israel who has recently settled after living a nomadic life around the world in places like Canada, Brasil and Thailand. She has mostly worked with acrylic paint mixed with other mediums such as gems, clay and glass, however in recent years she has focused on watercolour paint because it was easy to transport during her travels. Elsa creates the most wonderful mandala designs by combining watercolour pencils along with shimmer drops watercolour paints for added colour shift and shimmer highlights. Her designs are a colourful play of interlocking harmonious shapes. Each shape colourfully shaded and often including detailed dots and pattern. Elsa has written about a piece she has created.

Artwork By Elsa Douillard - Written By Elsa Douillard

I created this piece in a moment of transition in my life when I decided to settle after almost four years of nomadism. I usually paint on white paper but at this time I was suddenly attracted to work only on a black background. Black is not a colour, it is the saturation of all colours at the same time. It symbolizes fullness that will soon make space for renewal. By adding colours to the black paper, I created spaces and emptiness around the shapes.

Looking back now I can see how it made sense for me: the saturation of experiences, of these four years of moving around, and the end of that chapter of my life. At the same time, I found Shimmer Drops on TikTok and fell in love with the Mythical Creatures set! It felt like I had been waiting all my life to come across such watercolour paints! Looking at them from one perspective they were a certain colour and from another perspective they completely changed! They were the perfect match for what I was going through and the possibilities that the unknown future was holding for me. So as soon as I received them, I tried Pegasus and Siren on black paper and created this piece as a type of self-therapy to process to support the changes in my life. It has simplicity with a lot of empty space. Stability symbolised through the number 3 and magic with the colours.

It is still one of my favourite pieces to this day!