Featured Artist

Chrysalis

Titiana

Grounded in a rich tradition of representation Elizabeth Zanzinger’s work creates a bridge between the real and the imagined. She paints ephemeral spaces in which magic can exist alongside us, where nature intervenes and commonplace things may not be quite as they seem. The viewer is drawn in by passages of exquisite detail, juxtaposed by her vigorous brush work which mirrors and reinforces the duality in her subject matter. In execution and narrative Zanzinger offers an opportunity to contemplate and converse about contemporary life, the options open to us, and the possibilities.

Elizabeth Zanzinger has won national competitions and has been collected and published internationally, including work at the Museu Europea d’Art Modern (MEAM) in Barcelona, Spain. She was recently a featured finalist in the Art Renewal Center and Portrait Society of America’s annual competitions. In addition to her personal work, she has occasionally taken on large commissions. Most notably, for the NASA Ames Research Center in California, where she had the priviledge of indulging in her keen interest for applied and theoretical science.

Elizabeth Zanzinger paints full-time in Oakland, California. She studied at the Aristides Atelier and Gage Academy of Fine Art in Seattle and finished her education with a fellowship at the Grand Central Academy, New York City, in 2012.

My work is blending classical realism with mythological narratives in a way that, as I imagine we have always needed to do, blurs and twists the line between abstraction and realism. My work is endeavoring toward the texture, fluidity, and grandness that I have always admired from great traditional painters from Baroque to Mannerist to Impressionism and beyond. I look for the bridges in technique as well as narrative. How can I meld mythological narratives with modern themes of psychedelia and mysticism to convey their universality? How can I fuse realism with abstraction until the two can better convey our evolved story? Every painting is a question answered in the process and in the viewing. Evolving our collective mythology in my work is of the utmost importance.

Painting is the language that comes most naturally to me. A mark represents a moment in time, the sum of which is intended to capture a fragment of a fleeting thought or dream. The genesis of a work is both delicate and violent, I use this rhythm to investigate my astonishment and fascination with human form and consciousness. I choose painting because it is unassuming but powerful in its silence. My work is representational, but always searching for that thing beyond the surface.