In Native pollinators, Elif Soyer presents a series of dense, highly tactile paintings that mirror the generative, "lovely chaos" of her urban garden. Conceived initially as a commitment to repurpose remnant paint from her studio and break free from image-driven constraints, Soyer’s intuitive process evolved into a direct parallel with her 30-year transformation of a concrete backyard into a thriving haven for native species.

Through the heavy accumulation of paint, repurposed materials, text fragments, and rich textural buildup, Soyer creates unexpected harmonies and interactions between color, density, and negative space.

Her works embody the joy of daily curation, celebrating the spontaneous beauty that arises when control is surrendered to nature and material chance.

Elif Soyer is a Turkish-American artist. She received a BA in Economics from Emory University in 1985, a studio diploma from the SMFA in 1995 and a MFA in 1997 from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tuft University, Boston. Her work has been shown in the US and abroad, and has oscillated between drawing on the interior landscape of the human body and the exterior landscape of her immediate environment, but has always had a very strong tie to the passing of time through layering or other obsessive processes. While she loves the process of painting and drawing, she has a very strong attraction to so-called “untraditional” mediums such as gravel, discarded textile, raw clay, concrete and scraps of day to day life. Her more recent work is a compilation of experience as journaled onto, combined with daily scraps of correspondence and out-edited art from previous trains of though and expression. Elif comes from a family background of Turkish artists and poets of some renown including Bedri Rahmi and Eren Eyüboğlu, and Sabahattin Eyüboğlu. She is also a fencing coach and co-owner of Moe Fencing Club in Somerville, MA where she trains Olympic hopefuls, weekend warriors and some of the top-ranked fencers in the US. She is starting her 5th season as head coach of the Brandeis Men’s and Women’s NCAA fencing team.