Studio Visit with Elizabeth Sheehan

Photos by Jessica Nunn @jnphoto

Last week, Exhibitions Coordinator Elizabeth Yang joined our final This is Art Soc!: Artist Highlights artist, Elizabeth Sheehan, for a studio visit and interview to discuss her creative journey and her art, now up at Taste till 15 April.

Elizabeth is a postgraduate student of Museum and Heritage Studies, and her creative practice has always been a focal point both in her personal and professional pathways.

She was first introduced to oil painting at the age of twelve through her grandmother, a painter, and continued to take art classes through school, university, and beyond, enrolling in all the art classes available at her undergraduate institution, and even enrolling in classes at a nearby university.

She has a wide range of creative pursuits, working recreationally as a photographer and a web and graphic designer for a band based in Chicago. check out her portfolio and the band Hoverboard.

In St Andrews, she paints in her flat living room, filled with natural light, with two large windows facing east and west.

The space and the windows are new sources of inspiration, with many of her recent paintings featuring the view outside, or the window itself.

During our visit, she has a painting in progress. She describes it as being an experimentation with an interplay between abstraction and realism, and the struggle she has working out a balance as she goes.

Elizabeth sometimes begins her paintings exploring an emotion. We discuss (the green painting), which she describes as an abstract depiction of a road near her home in the US. She has recently begun exploring abstract works, with this, among others, on display now at Taste. The explosion of greens (a favourite colour), with blurred, light brushwork, evokes memories of hot and hazy summer days on the American east coast. The humidity, the chirping birds, the slight breeze, the rustling of the leaves, and the warmth of the sun all become palpable as one views the piece.

This is Art Soc! is now open until 15 April at Taste

Find Elizabeth’s website here

and follow her on Instagram here @elizabethfsheehanart

Photos by Jessica Nunn @jnphoto