BIOGRAPHY
Elizabeth Anthony lives and makes art in both Bozeman, Montana and Marina del Rey, California. After a career as an appellate attorney, she turned to art, a lifelong passion. Most recently, Elizabeth studied painting, printmaking and art history as a graduate student at Montana State University from 2020 to 2021. She also has a J.D. from the UCLA School of Law and B.A. in English literature from Williams College. Elizabeth is a voracious reader and a big fan of opera and classical music. She loves to bike, hike and hone her golf game, and relishes Montana’s ever-changing big skies and LA’s perfect weather. She is still laughing at her husband Pete‘s jokes, thirty years and counting. When not making art, she spends as much time as possible with Pete and their three adult children, Evan, Nick and Isobel, who are a constant source of joy.
PHOTOGRAPHY: LESLIE BARTON
ARTIST STATEMENT
I have a restless imagination and a natural inclination to work in different mediums. As a painter, I move among genres to explore what inspires me. Throughout my work is a desire to communicate the details of moments that appear when we pay close attention, and to examine the narratives beneath our personal interactions.
Landscape painting continually engages me, and I enjoy being part of this long artistic tradition. Working plein air is a foundation of my practice. I aim for a loose form of realism in my landscapes, more personal than what a camera would record. An outgrowth of my landscape work is what I call my “investigations.” They focus on the detritus associated with the construction and demolition going on all around us, often in uncomfortably close proximity to the natural environment. When I paint people, I intend for the viewer to interact with my subjects as within a performance. Often I draw on narratives from classical sources — literature, the Bible, art history — as those stories have deep emotional resonance.
As printmaker, I also explore landscape, especially in my etchings. In my monoprints, I draw on imagery from mythology, as in my series based on the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice, and of Phaeton and Helios.
I am both a visual artist and a word lover. I see poetry as the literary partner to painting, a means to let words spin and resonate with meaning. Poetry lets language bend to express the subtlety and wonder of human experience. I write poetry to put a little bit of my soul out into the world.
VISIT
Visit me at my Montana studio:
Emerson Center for Arts and Culture
111 S. Grand Ave., Suite 211/212
Bozeman, MT 59715