Isabel Crause

Bio

Isabel Crause (b. 1980 South Africa) is a self-trained artist and freelance writer, living and working in Cape Town, South Africa.

Her work explores concepts of personal growth, transformation, resilience, and self-expression. Isabel uses botanical themes, embracing abstraction, vibrant colours and loose, expressive mark-making to capture the raw energy of these human experiences. Through deconstruction and reconstruction, she creates compositions that reflect the beauty in the chaos of becoming.

Her work explores the paradoxes of self, where growth and transformation are subject to opposing forces. These contradictions seem at odds on the surface but reveal a deeper truth when embraced. Floral and botanical themes become a metaphor for the inner conflicts one experiences in the process of personal evolution: the push and pull between energies that ultimately shape who we are.

She uses bold colours, gestural marks and layered textures to create expressive compositions that symbolise the tension between control and surrender, growth and stagnation, emergence and dissolution. To thrive, she says we must welcome both.

The creative act requires self-excavation. To dig deep. In this space, she finds sense and beauty in the chaos. Accepting the paradoxes of self, allowing them to co-exist and complement one another. A reminder that becoming is not an end-state, but an ongoing experience best enjoyed by not taking ourselves too seriously.

Ultimately, the work is a meditation on self-realisation – ones inner dialogue as we strive to become the best version of ourselves – with nature reflecting the human spirit, our quiet struggles, our hidden depths, and our moments of vibrant self-expression.

Collections

Works held in private collections in France, UK, USA, Australia, Dubai, Netherlands and South Africa.