Luise Schaller’s illustrations investigate “the thin veil between reality, fiction and metaphor”

The Berlin-based illustrator Luise Schaller loves to experiment with “non-linearity” in her illustrated narratives, using drawing to investigate “the thin veil between reality, fiction and metaphor”, the artist shares. She uses the detailed drawing of immersive scenes “as a tool for reflection,” she says, “making use of fragmented pieces of image, words and objects in order to create a ruminative, playful and emotionally charged visual world”.

Originally from the south of Germany, the illustrator moved to Berlin to study communication design at the University of the Arts before relocating to New York in her exchange year to study fine art painting and drawing at the Cooper Union School of Art. Since her studies, the illustrator has established a tactile, surrealist style with a focus on drawing and writing, using pencil, collage, painting and printmaking to create publications and works on paper.

Inspired by artists that explore our internal emotional world, such as feminist artist Hollis Sigler, who explored illness and pain in her drawings, Luise’s practice is often a process of translating internal feelings and memories: “things that may be hard to grasp at first”, she explains. This comes across in her recent series of etchings Diary of ungratefulness and her artist book I didn’t want any flowers, which explores the trope of vulnerability through poetry and drawing in a soft, intricate visual language that “explores child-like depictions as a means to discuss topics of power, anger, hurt and defeat and the wish to escape”. On the translation of emotions into illustrations the artist concludes: “I am almost using drawing as a way to localise and make sense of them in our world, creating an intimate space, where the familiar and the strange can intertwine”.