MEET THE ARTIST
Biography
Elizabeth is an artist that grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, and from a young age she was always drawing, painting, or being creative. Her parents and teachers encouraged her to follow her passions, and she studied at the Pennsylvania State University, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art and a minor in Art History in 2021. While pursuing her degree, she studied abroad in Florence, Italy, where she learned how to fresco paint like the Old Masters and traveled around the country looking at art and architecture. In 2020, when classes went online and people stayed inside, Elizabeth began studying the light and nature in the spaces around her. This is where she truly fell in love with oil painting. Since graduation, Elizabeth has shown throughout Pennsylvania in local galleries and various exhibitions. She has regularly been an artist in residence at Nemacolin resort in Farmington, PA, where she continued her artistic practice in a studio setting as well as teaching private oil painting lessons. Elizabeth is still living and working in the Pittsburgh area, and continues to paint spaces and nature that she loves.
Artist Statement
My work memorializes snapshots of life's fleeting moments as expressed through light and the natural world. I explore how strands of memory are conveyed through images simultaneously profound and mundane.
Beyond the depictions of nature, my work puts emphasis on place and its importance to me. I am painting scenes that I know personally and as I see them through my own atmospheric lens. I like to shift the focus around the composition to push the fuzziness or the unknown sense of the atmosphere. My work is photorealistic, but not, at the same time. It can’t be captured by a camera. These paintings serve almost as a timeline of memories for me, a way to capture events and little pieces of a lifetime no matter how mundane they may be. My kitchen windowsill, the hanging plant that has been in the corner of my sunroom for as long as I can remember, or a brief shot of an alleyway during my travels - memory is central to my work.
Sometimes, these moments can be so fleeting, just a quick snap of the camera, but in the process of really analyzing those little details, I notice so much more. I think this is part of what I want the viewer to take away from the work as well. I want them to notice these details; to really stop for a moment and take in the present moment. Part of what drives me as an artist is the need to highlight these spaces that can tend to be overlooked. I want the viewer to contemplate and focus in on the details of these intimate spaces; to not simply pass them by.
