ILSE FOURIE

Ilse Fourie’s work centers on animals as individuals, honouring their presence, character, and emotional lives. Through a range of mediums, Ilse creates both intimate portrait work and light-hearted functional pieces that bring animals into everyday human spaces. Her work sits across two complementary bodies of practice: intimate portrait work that honours individual animals, and playful functional pieces that celebrate the everyday joy animals bring into our lives.

Rooibos tea paintings form a particularly important part of her work, using a natural pigment indigenous to South Africa. The medium is intentionally fragile and impermanent, with subtle shifts and fading over time. This non-permanence mirrors the transient nature of life itself, reinforcing themes of presence, contemplation, and mortality. These works invite slow looking, where noticing and being with the subject becomes part of the experience.

Alongside her art practice, Ilse is a multi-credentialled, certified animal behaviour consultant specialising in fear-free, force-free animal care. This professional background deeply informs her ability to observe, interpret, and sensitively capture not only physical likeness, but the unique character and emotional presence of each animal she depicts.