Liz Wright
Imagined Reality
My detailed paintings are both fantasy and acutely observed reality.
I choose to paint scenes that are familiar to me: part of everyday life and inspiration from travel. At first glance the realism of a scene makes an impact, look further and they suffuse with a quality of ‘hyper – reality’.
I studied at St Martins School of Art and after at the West of England College of Art Bristol, with David Inshaw RA and Alfred Stockham WRA where I achieved a degree in Fine Art.
My paintings became a reaction against the minimalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The reverence to artists such as Ad Reinhardt, with his black canvases, with no colour , texture or subject matter. I saw no direction in abstraction. So I went to the other extreme looked at early Florentine paintings, old masters such as Pieter Bruegel, Uccello, Giotto, Botticelli, Pierro dela Francesca and began painting every leaf, blade of grass with figures in landscapes.
After graduating and moved to London. And worked there for 6 years doing various jobs; such as Techincal Illustration, selling chest-expanders in Harrods and manageress of the first independent beefburger restaurant in Notting Hill Gate; I had started exhibiting so in 1978 I moved to Bruton in Somerset to paint full time. This was the beginning of my long career of many one woman, mixed exhibitions and commissions.
My paintings have been reproduced as greetings cards, book, CD and magazine covers. Most of my entire collection of paintings is housed by the Bridgeman Art Library who licence my secondary copyright in London, New York, Paris and Berlin.
Now I live on Portland, Dorset where there are very few trees, so I have been painting pebbles, and rocks. I am in love with the quarries, attended the Opening of the Tout Quarry in 1981. The constantly changing colours of the sea, sky and rocks. Also I am now looking inland for inspiration from the Dorset landscapes. I love clumps of trees on hill tops and individual trees that look as if they are dancing.