Liz Walker brought her creative energy to Muse today to work on an acrylic painting with elements of printmaking and collage. Liz likes to bring a lot of pattern and texture into her paintings and tries to avoid large areas of plain solid colors. Along with her paints and brushes, Liz brought some paper scraps and wallpaper and fabric swatches with her. She cut and painted small pieces of paper and collaged them into her painting to add a bit of texture and dimension to the pillows on the couch. She used the texture of the wallpaper and fabric pieces to print and stamp patterns onto her painting with contrasting colors of paint. To get the blended and scumbled look she likes, Liz says she’s also been incorporating more gray tones and neutrals into her paintings and juxtaposing them against brighter colors.
Liz enjoys painting figures in everyday settings. The shapes and colors she chooses give her scenes balance, order, and visual interest that would work equally well as abstract compositions. “I work from chaos to order,” Liz says as she builds the layers of her painting. She finds that getting started with a painting is the easy part, but proceeding to the point of knowing when and how to finish is the real challenge.
Liz teaches beginning watercolor painting as well as acrylic monotype at Multnomah Arts Center and Village Gallery of Arts. In addition to the An Artist A Day event this month, she is participating in an upcoming show at the Village Gallery of Arts in which 100 artists will exhibit four 6×6 paintings. More of her work can be seen on her website, lizwalkerart.com.
Click on thumbnails to see larger pictures.
An Artist A Day : Blog 