Lizzie Abelson

Lizzie is a New England native, born and raised in Suffield, Connecticut. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and spent her junior year abroad with RISD’s European Honors Program. She currently lives in Boylston, Massachusetts.

Ask anyone familiar with my practice and they'd likely mention my reluctance to be pigeonholed into a single style. While my vision is consistent, my interpretation of it is varied, multifaceted, and forever in flux. What I choose to depict and how I approach it is dependent on myriad factors: place, weather, mood, music, etc. My aesthetic sense, however, remains a constant: I am perpetually drawn to quiet colours, shadowy liminal spaces, distantly vague horizon lines, and strong compositional elements. I want to draw the viewer in. Close.

I create intimately sized paintings based loosely on actual locations. These works present as balanced arrangements of perfect imperfections. Despite their hard-edged, just-so qualities, I want them to feel equally timeworn and timeless. I apply paint messily yet with focused intent. Thrashed brushes, dirty rags, scummy brayer, sharp blades, sandpaper, frayed toothbrushes, scraps of paper, and miles of tape. I blot, scrape, scratch, and score. The resulting surfaces are thinly layered and subtly textural in appearance. I've heard other artists refer to these works as “intelligent”, “thoughtful”, “studied”, “bold”, and “precise”. To me they are altered memories. They are spaces where, if one thinks on it, certain elements don't quite make sense. Shadows might not match the light and the perspective might be slightly skewed, yet it all works...and therein lies the magic.