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Inside The Studio Of Byron Bay-Based Artist Josephine Ehlers
20/12/24
Author: RIISE Team
DOCUMENTED BY: RIISE
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RIISE visited Josephine Ehlers, a Denmark-born, Byron Bay-based artist, where she shared intimate moments of her creative practice.
RIISE visited Josephine Ehlers, a Denmark-born, Byron Bay-based artist, where she shared intimate moments of her creative practice.
A vibrant, creative rhythm pulses through Byron Bay. Local artisans fill the farmer’s market at sunrise, while night buskers draw lively crowds. Nestled in the heart of the Northern Rivers resides the hand-built multidisciplinary NoWave Studio, home to emerging Denmark-born artist Josephine Ehlers. Known for her joyful abstract style, Ehlers’s work uncovers the unusual and unexpected in the everyday.
Ehlers discovered her creativity during her formative years in Denmark, immersed in her father’s and grandparents’ passion for architecture and design. This early exposure, combined with her innate love for collecting objects to inspire her drawings, eventually led her to search for an art course after relocating to the Northern Rivers in 2018. There, she stumbled upon the Byron School of Art, where she studied under Michael Cusack, whose work is widely admired and features in several major public and corporate collections. The rest, as they say, is history.
Documented By: RIISE Team
Ehlers’s works are characterised by a love of bold colour, large shapes, and urban landscapes, deriving inspiration from the mundane. “I love a good car park, road works, and shadow play,” she shares.
Ehlers balances creative freedom with meticulous attention to detail, ensuring no element is overlooked. From stretching her canvases to capturing clean-lined compositions in urban environments, her process is deliberate and considered.
Beyond the preliminary stages, Ehlers’s approach becomes uninhibited and liberated, allowing her work to exude a vibrant, bold, playful energy across the canvas. “[The] first few brush strokes are so refreshing. The possibilities are endless.”
“[The] first few brush strokes are so refreshing. The possibilities are endless.”
When we met Ehlers in her studio, it felt like a meeting of shared purpose. We believe in the power of optimism and creativity to spread joy. Ehlers’s distinctive style, guaranteed to light up any room, has earned her widespread admiration amongst the RIISE team — so much so that we act as her pro bono gallery by hanging two of her paintings on the walls of our Paddington store.
Read on as RIISE interviews Ehlers about her creative process, sources of inspiration, and what’s currently igniting her creativity.
RIISE: Tell us a little about yourself and how you became an artist.
JE: After commencing my visual art studies, I realised that I had been in this creative headspace for a long time because no matter what I was doing or where I was, I always had a pen and a paper on hand; before BSA, it hadn’t been obvious to me. This uncovered a crucial aspect of my identity.
RIISE: What is your creative process? We’d love to hear who, what or where you derive your inspiration from.
JE: My investigative process will often include finding clean-cut compositions in the urban landscape, and taking photographs will frequently be an entry point into my paintings. The shapes and lines I make have a recurring familiarity across my works, whereas the palette and mark-making will often come intuitively.
I like to start in an open-minded and free manner. Nothing in my mind, just music and empty canvases. I will try to work on all of them in one session to add continuity, but also because I often run out of surfaces to paint on when I get in the right headspace.
Documented By: RIISE Team
RIISE: How do you begin a work?
JE: My process usually begins with whichever colour I’m into that week or some spray paint, oil stick, or scribbles. Words I need to get out of my head.
One of my favourite moments in painting is when you have an empty piece of canvas. I sometimes use the first part of the painting to make some lines for the composition to form; sometimes, I just paint and let it come naturally, but this often makes things harder to finish. I prefer to have many surfaces going at a time, so I don’t overwork one painting and keep the theme in all the paintings for that series.
RIISE: How long have you been working in your studio? How often are you painting there?
JE: I moved in February this year. It’s the biggest space I have been in yet. Previously, I've had to paint in my room or, if lucky enough, paint in a spare room of the houses I’ve lived in.
This made creating a much bigger part of my every day. However, now I have the freedom of the warehouse space to not worry about getting paint on the carpet of a rental property. I have been wishing for a bigger space for a long time! As the years of art school passed, my paintings would get bigger, but never the spaces I worked in. This often meant working outside or spreading out through the living room. My housemates were very understanding, but it was difficult. Yet I think it made the paintings what they were.
The space has something to do with the work, but the work primarily concerns where I am as an artist. I will continue to produce my work no matter the location.
RIISE: What are you working on at the moment?
JE: I’ve taken a liking to stretching my canvas, whereas I used to pay a professional to do this. It has given me a new layer to add to my art practice. I enjoy it more than I thought; seeing the painting through from start to finish is extremely satisfying.
I enjoy choosing the canvas to cut to size and looking at endless possibilities of paintings. This is why I enjoy painting on unstretched canvas. For the last couple of years, I have been buying 10 m rolls of unstretched canvas and just painting and then deciding on the parameters of the painting.
I am collecting all the offcuts and combining them to make new paintings. My next project will be researching how best to sew the canvas together. I am also constantly playing with the idea of printing my paintings onto textiles so they can be used for any cloth in the home.
Visit our Paddington store and experience Ehlers’s creativity for yourself.
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Documented By: RIISE
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