Painting
Elizabeth Allen
A lifetime of dabbling in the arts became a passion once Elizabeth Allen discovered acrylic on canvas. She had tried watercolour, pastel, stained glass and sculpture, but nothing inspired her the way canvas did the first time she touched it with a brush loaded with pigment. Being water-based, acrylics can be diluted to imitate watercolour or applied thickly with brush or palette knife as in oil painting. Allen’s work involves a little of each depending on the effects she is working to achieve. She often uses matte medium to thin the paint and extend the colour, but also incorporates heavy bodied pigments and mediums into her work to create texture. Allen begins each painting by applying pigment to canvas in random strokes. Allowing each mark and colour choice to guide her to the next, the work evolves in this manner until the theme of the painting becomes evident. At this point Allen begins to eliminate the extraneous, each stroke deliberately placed to define and enhance the subject, be it landscape or abstract.
Inspired by artists like Turner and Rothko, Allen lives and paints in Victoria, BC where the beauty of nature is a constant source of inspiration. Her work can be found in international collections.
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