#36 Elizabeth Lazeren

“Elizabeth is best known for her marine paintings that have a solitary and sublime melancholy.”
-American Art Collector

I get to live in this beautiful, wild, infamous, and seafaring place . . . a 10,000 year-old ‘spit of sand,’ jutting out 50 miles into the North Atlantic Ocean. I get to paint it over and over and over. Thus, I paint what I love—the history, environment, and people of the Outer Cape. I use memory, experience, and imagination. I work at making paintings that have a clarity of mood, but a vague sense of place. Always thinking that less is more, I distill an image in my mind beforehand, and sometimes again when I paint it. I choose elements that are “signature” components of my work: strong use of obliques, tonal color, big skies, and a solitary feeling often described as sublime melancholy. When I am painting, my choices are made quickly, somehow knowing what “painting marks” come next.

If I am asked why I became a painter, I explain that when I was 8, I was enrolled in art classes at the Wadsworth Atheneum, and the paintings that I saw there inspired me. For the first time in my life, I saw great paintings and I was drawn to certain ones. I would explore the museum and seek out the Hudson River landscapes and the huge Lady of Shallot painting. These paintings became my imaginary world, but looking back, I realize that I was probably absorbing them. Mesmerized by their visual impact, I began to fill my mind with the desire to become an artist. As a youngster, I always seemed to be drawing, long after other children had stopped. And I kept on doing it, and then I painted, and that was amazing! I continued to paint more and more. There was no reason to stop. I fell “in love” with painting and never looked back.