ELIZABETH ALLEN ART
Fine Art America
Welcome and thank you for visiting my Fine Art America Gallery.
My life is not too different from many artists wanting to paint but having to work elsewhere for income. For much of my time I was an elementary teacher and later an office manager. Both jobs I enjoyed, but if I could have painted and made a living from it, how wonderful that would have been.
I am basically a self-trained artist having had very little formal training. The couple of courses I did take were one in color theory and the other in printmaking.
My interest in art began in early 1970 where I did several graphite landscapes of old barns and a few watercolors with cheap paint and paper. A trip to France in the late 1970s provided an opportunity to collect photos of subjects that I then upon return created as pen and ink sketches. Character sketches were my favorite subjects at that time. In early 1980s I experimented with watercolor landscapes and florals with some success in marketing them in the Washington DC area.
Then life got in the way of producing art of any kind. For 35 years I was unable to fulfill my desire to draw or paint. Then in August 2019 I learned that I was going to lose my eyesight from multiple diseases. Realizing that I have only about five years where I would be able to see well enough to paint, gave me the impetus to make the most of those years. My health had returned from having cancer in 2014 and I could now devote myself to art.
I chose a new medium with which to experiment, pastel.
The brightness of pastel is ideal for capturing the vividness of flowers and fall and spring foliage. And being out of drawing practice, pastels are so forgiving. My efforts are devoted to capturing the beauty of this God given world. Of course, that is an impossible task. But if you can even communicate a hint of that beauty, then maybe you can enable others to appreciate it. In our fast-paced world most individuals don’t spend enough time contemplating the amazing beauty of our world. Stop and smell the roses is the expression that comes to mind.
September 9, 2021 Update to my biography:
It has been two years since I began painting again and I have since returned to other mediums, e.g. watercolor and colored pencil drawings. The subject matter often determines which medium and substrate I will use. I often seek to elicit an emotional response to what I am portraying. Sometimes the response is just an appreciation of nature, but sometimes it is more of other emotions. I paint because it gives me such happiness. So it is my hope that my art succeeds in giving my viewers at least a moment of enjoyment also.
Thank you for visiting.
Elizabeth Allen joined Pixels.com Licensing on May 12th, 2020.
