Artist Statement
Elizabeth Austin melds imagery and techniques inspired by new materials and traditional European art to create a visually dazzling body of work. She studied new media including inflatables, holograms, video, sound art and sky art at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies in Cambridge, MA. Then, living for more than a decade in France, she absorbed the lessons of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture.
Drawing on these diverse sources, Austin developed what she believes to be a unique working process: suspending reflective materials such as holographic foils, mica and aluminum powders in clear acrylic medium and layering it onto transparent acrylic blocks. She has refined this technique, adding multiple layers of acrylic paint embedded with mica and other new materials. Painted on the back of the blocks, the paintings suggest three dimensions when viewed from the front.
A visit to a cathedral in Belgium revealed that the techniques Austin has been using are, in fact, very similar to those used for centuries by artists from Europe, India and China to create reverse paintings on glass.
Austin creates large-scale paintings that have a commanding, even cosmic, presence. Her Reliquaries were conceived as intimate experiences.
Each work is numbered, and is framed in a hand-crafted Florentine wood box. |
