Elizabeth’s Studio

I view these current paintings as self-portraits, each reflecting my daily life by expressing the changeability of the moon. There is similarity but distinct differences between the paintings. The moon, both mystical and stable, draws the viewer in for its familiarity and universality.

I have been painting images of the moon since 2017. As an outcome of the pandemic I have had an imperative make a visual record of the phases of the moon— the moons became both a beacon and place to gather my thoughts and mark the passage of time.

During this time, I have experimented with how much moon is be enough moon. I became interested in the moon obscured by trees or the moon as just a crescent. The daily practice was constantly painting the moon in many iterations kept me going throughout both cancer and the pandemic. Painting the same subject over a long period of time also has afforded me the freedom me to become more experimental: In one the paintings an interior/ exterior space is implied by surrounding the moon with a dark enframement. In another painting I give the crescent a more whimsical quality by both the intensity of color and surrounding it with staccato-like squiggles of branches.

In the last four years I have exhibited several of these paintings internationally, participating in international arts exhibitions at the Venice Biennale and the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris.

In this coming November the work will be displayed in Dacha, Bangladesh at the Asian Art Biennale. It seems in keeping with the moon’s constant nature of change that the paintings themselves would travel globally.

April 2021