Frankie Elouise is a trans-feminine multidisciplinary artist working primarily in large-scale figurative painting. She began her career as a tattoo artist, co-founding a studio focused on contemporary, non-traditional work, and after five years transitioned to oil painting to expand her visual language. In 2024, she presented her first solo exhibition, My Hair Is Getting Longer, followed by a billboard project for the Bows Artist-Run Centre titled Queens of the Midway.
In her work, Elouise explores the intersections of femininity, community, and capitalism, questioning how social systems shape identity.
Flowers and Butterflies
“I was getting a little burnt out on tattooing. It’s a very physically demanding job. It’s also a lot of socializing and being around people, which I started to find draining.
“Tattooing often means working within someone else’s ideas, and I didn’t feel like I could explore in the way I wanted to.
“I did a lot of flowers and butterflies, mostly really cute tattoos. They were very popular. I developed a strong fundamental understanding of drawing, which really helps with painting. But aesthetically and stylistically, my work as a painter became very different from my tattoo work.”
This World, That One
“Right now, I’m working on my second solo show, for which I received a grant from Calgary Arts Development. I’m still in the early stages, but I know it’s going to be very different from what I’ve made in the past. It will be shown in Calgary in early summer.
“The project focuses on how exploitation exists in our society, and on imagining alternatives to those systems. I’m making two groups of three paintings. The first three will explore a dystopian reality, highlighting the really terrible aspects of how our world works right now.
“The second set of three is more about fantasy, imagining what the world could be, or visualizing systems that counteract those structures. I think the work is going to feel fun and experimental.”
A Big Learning Curve
“When I started painting, I was just doing whatever felt right, and it’s evolved a lot over time. I didn’t go to school, so I taught myself through books and conversations with friends.
“I study what I like about certain pieces and what I don’t. There’s been a lot of trial and error, and a lot of work that never sees the light of day because I hate it.
“There are so many different ways to make paintings, and I love seeing work by women and queer artists. Toni Cormier, Marigold Santos, [and] Solana Morante are my local inspirations. Louise Bonnet, Judy Chicago and Francine Gravel are some of my current international ones.”
Fluidity in Systems
“I like to intertwine masculine and feminine bodies to create something unusual. It’s a way to show what it feels like to be detached from your body. That kind of dissociation can create strange visual effects, and it reflects how the sense of self can shift.
“I’m interested in the intersection of topics like femininity and capitalism, because they’re deeply connected. There’s so much nuance in how these systems overlap, especially when it comes to gender and social structures, which affect so much of our daily life. For example, the way capitalism influences femininity: women are exploited through industries like makeup and fashion. These standards are made up, but they’re enforced by social systems.
“Community is another theme I think about a lot. Many people don’t feel like they have a community or have a hard time connecting with it because of how our world is structured.
“Part of being an artist is questioning why things are the way they are.”
‘Elon Musk Takes Me to Mars for Being a Girl’
“This is my most recent piece, made for the Stride Gallery fundraiser. I like this one because I made it mostly for fun, and it came together very organically. It’s weird, dreamy, and set in outer space. It has a really crazy name.
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“I started with a colour scheme, because the print process for the fundraiser allowed a maximum of three colours. I knew I wanted blue and red, and then I thought about what could be red, and I was like, ‘Oh, the planet Mars.’
“I was already thinking about similar themes in my work, like billionaire patriarchy takeover. It felt very present at the time, and I wanted to play with that.
“She [the figure] looks so defeated, annoyed, tired of it all.”
This Q&A was created in collaboration with Werklund Centre.
To see more of Frankie Elouise’s work, visit frankieelouise.com or follow her on Instagram: @princess_girly_gurl.
